The Rule of Two
by Usaki Daikatana
Summary: When Padme and Anakin are sent on a mission for the Senate, little do they know that Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has been sent to the same world to hunt a Dark Jedi. A revelation in the middle of combat leads Obi-Wan to discover something about Padme before even she knows it. (Prequel period, during the Clone Wars).
1. Discovery

**A/n :** I had the genesis of this story floating around in my head for a long while – since I read Matthew Stover's novelization of _Revenge of the Sith_ and was impressed with his writing style and the idea of the Jedi. I'd never been the biggest _Star Wars_ fan, but the character of Obi-Wan in the prequels was really appealing to me. In addition, friends had written _Star Wars_ pieces and so I was inspired.

The chronology of _Star Wars_ is very complex, and relies on expanded universe information. I am not a big _Star Wars_ geek, and so the placing of this story is vague. It takes place _after_ the death of Siri Tachi, _after_ the promotion of Obi-Wan to Master and Council member, _after_ the conception of Luke and Leia and _before_ Obi-Wan and Anakin are sent to the Outer Rim Sieges. This places it roughly half-way through the last year of the Clone Wars. As far as I can tell, there is opportunity for this story to take place – if there are any chronological errors reviews pointing them out and offering solutions would be gratefully accepted!

In terms of style, as mentioned above, this story owes a great deal to Matthew Stover's _Revenge of the Sith_ novelization.

 **The Rule of Two**

 **Part I : Discovery**

"I have a bad feeling about this," the Jedi bodyguard remarked tautly to the Senator of Naboo that was his charge. His 'saber was out and lit, his whole body thrumming to the tune of his blue-hot blade, the hilt of his weapon creaking under the servo-whine caress of his mechanical right arm. Storm clouds rolled across his shoulders and suppressed lightning rippled in the muscles of his jaw. Harsh actinic light cast from his sword underlit his handsome face and seemed to blow his dark hair in an immaterial gale, spread glutinous shadow across black leather as deep as velvet and soft as night. His 'saber moved like the tongue of a Garollian ghost viper, as though he were batting away Correllian hornets. Beside him, the Senator smiled softly.

"You always do, Ani." She was older than he, yet looked younger, her face almost ethereally beautiful and her voice and touch light and gentle. Dressed as she was now in a designer outfit of black-gray Corellian nanosilk from the boutiques of Five Hundred Republica she was a vulpine shadow against the matte darkness of the undertunnels of the gigantic tubular cooling sink, a mysterious and shadowed prospect. There was a shuttered quality to her eyes, as if she were a rare jewel that only showed a single facet of its complex perfection at a time; faces that were large and complete enough to be almost regarded as individual gems.

Yet each side was well-cut and perfectly polished, even if not entirely complete. What flaws might have lain inside the heart of that gemstone were very probably not truly inside her at all, but rather rested on the floor of the Senate or in the coiled ice-dragon in the heart of the man beside her.

The Jedi remained unconvinced. "We should not be here – it will betray your suspicions to the ruling council of Kyunden if we are discovered." He paused, his eyes scanning the darkness for threats and possibly making them appear there. "If we are _discovered_ . . ." he said again for emphasis.

Harsh, stabbing, white light cut through the dusty darkness. Anakin's experienced eyes recognized it immediately as the shoulder lamps of battle droids, which told him Padme's suspicions had been entirely correct – Kyunden was a staging ground for the Separatist movement, and that they had, quite clearly, been _discovered_.

o

o

This is Anakin Skywalker.

The greatest Jedi of his generation, of _any_ generation, the Hero With No Fear. An unstoppable fighter, an unbelievable pilot. His raw power transcends even the legends of the Jedi Order. He is the reason the war will be won.

Or so the Holonet says. The truth is, as all truths are, more complex.

As the battle droids' sergeant's vocalizer buzzed out a pre-programmed security command - " _Hand over your weapons!_ " - he was already in motion. His blade angled almost of its own volition into a perfect Djem So cadence and then was almost immediately forced down into an almost amateurish Soresu stance as blaster bolts hammered towards the two of them. He was forced to give ground for a pace or two, desperately flicking the galvened particle beams back towards the droids. They impacted on the duranium paneling of the walls in short showers of sparks. And then, after a few telling moments, Anakin Skywalker heard the voice of his former Master in his head;

 _Feel your way through, Anakin – be mindful of the Living Force. Like water, seek the most efficient path._

Of course, Obi-Wan was not there – he was far away, on Coruscant probably. Certainly not with Padme and Anakin, who were busy with their own missions. A diplomatic visit under the cover of Naboo-Kyunden trade negotiations, a diplomatic visit that was at least half information gathering. It had been Padme's idea to come here, and the Jedi Council's insistence a bodyguard be provided for her – one who could, himself, do his fair share of _aggressive negotiation_. Anakin had, while not being the _obvious_ choice, been the choice that was made – at the request of Senator Amidala and the suggestion of Chancellor Palpatine.

 _The Living Force._ Anakin opened himself to the Living Force and let it flow through him, feeling the intention to fire in the droids' computerized brains, sensing their targeting algorithms and plotting all possible trajectories. His conscious mind sloughed from him and – as smoothly as a Shalkian turtle slips into a pool – his stance slid from his barely-proficient Soresu into Shien.

Soresu was Kenobi, Shien was Skywalker. Kenobi had trained him, but the Force wanted to teach him. Sometimes, he even managed to let it.

Overhand chops smashed blaster fire down the corridor, the tip of the 'saber gouging chunks from the walls. Droids scattered and tumbled as Shien-deflected bolts of galvened energy burst through them in showers of bloodless sparks. His face was a rictus mask of grim rage now, lips drawn back from fine white teeth which sparkled pearlescent in the light of his sword.

A liquid surge in the torrid whirlpool that was the Force, and he span, his blade swinging behind him and deflecting another two bolts even as it shifted to his left hand. His eyes were on Padme's terrified face, and so he did not even look as his spread the fingers of his mechanical hand in a simple gesture. Three of the droids approaching from the other end of the corridor jerked backwards, their chestplates dented and sparks crackling around them. Blaster fire flew wide as they crashed into their comrades.

He glanced back over his shoulder, the corridor was stiff with battle droids clambering staggeringly over the wreckage of their cohorts. Even as he batted more blaster bolts away – the sheer number of them was getting too great to direct back at them with anything approaching accuracy – his eyes searched the section of corridor they were standing in . . . and then swept further afield as he realized that even if he cut through the gamma-welded metal, there was unlikely to be anything but solid rock or perhaps a series of power conduits on the other side.

What he needed, was a _door_.

In fact, he reflected in a shocking display of self-indulgence that cost him much of his Force-focus, what he needed was be here _alone_. Having to protect Padme here made his task all-but-impossible. He could not move from his position to defend her. If she were not here, he could simply slip into Ataru and hop-skip-and-jump down the corridor and dismantle the droids with a few swift strokes of the 'saber. Perhaps retaining Ataru there, for Djem So would swing the blade too wide and risk cutting into the walls and floor. Not that Anakin Skywalker really cared about property damage – especially _here_. Let the power-generation facilities of this disgusting rebel world collapse – a fitting punishment for them.

If Padme weren't here, he could get her out of here with ease.

 _Ah_.

The realization he had tripped on his own smooth logic, of forgetting why he was actually here and what he was supposed to be doing, cost him a moment of distraction. A blaster shot brushed his 'saber blade, deflecting shallowly into Padme's shoulder. She screamed in pain, nanosilk and flesh burning with a soft sizzle, and crashed against the wall of the corridor, her hand grabbing at her wound.

Anakin's face transfigured with rage, and he swept the lightsaber up and away, smashing two bolts into the roof, and then turning and spinning backwards, moving to protect his wife with his body. "I'll kill you all!" he howled. "Separatist scum!"

He extended his hand and made a fist, snarling as a droid simply crumpled to scrap. His Force perception was narrowed to a knife-thin sonar beam that ran along the corridor only as far as the droids. With a growl of inarticulate rage, he wrenched his hand back and a fragment of the droid's braincase flew past his head and impacted on the door-mechanism the Force told him was behind them. A push of his mind and Padme stumbled backwards through the opening door, a surprised half-gasp, half-scream on her lips . . .

. . . right into the arms of a super battle droid. Padme struggled, her beautiful face contorted in fear and rage reflected in the polished laser-deflecting chrome of the bulky machine. The seemingly-puny left arm of the war-engine grabbed her roughly by the neck while the right leveled its wrist blaster at her temple. "Hand over your weapon!" the droid growled, its voice over-modulated and sounding gloopy to Anakin's ears. Behind it, another two super battle droids leveled their weapons at his head.

Anakin simply didn't know what to do – and he wasn't not-thinking enough like a Jedi to realize he didn't need to _know_ what to do as the Force very-well _would_. He paused for a telling moment, his sword and arms still Shien-deflecting blaster fire.

And then the outlines of the three droids and Padme hardened and sharpened, the backdrop of the corridor they stood in glowing a muted, blushing blue. Under the whine of servos and the howl of blasterfire and the trip-hammer of Anakin's heart, he heard – or rather _felt_ – the ignition note of a lightsaber. The tone of the 'saber changed – although the experienced Jedi Anakin was recognized the note itself did not change, but rather the 'saber moved through the air and a dopler effect changed the appearance of the note to his ears – and the two droids with their weapons trained on Anakin collapsed into a litter of pieces on the floor.

Experienced Jedi? Who was he trying to kid – the man behind that blade had been training as a Jedi for longer than Anakin had been alive. And the fact _he_ still called it training without a hint of irony or pride made Anakin realize – just sometimes – how far he still had to go.

The droid holding the Senator turned with a whine of servos – with its head sunken into its chest it could not spin its neck to see what was behind it. Another short musical movement of the 'saber and the droid tumbled, sliced neatly into component parts. Anakin had to admire the way the other Jedi had dissected the droid at precisely the right moment and in the right places to ensure it fell _away_ from Padme, as elegantly as if it were a cloak lifted from her shoulders by Threepio. Not one strand of her braided hair was ruffled, not a single thread of her garments snagged. No ripple in the Force had shoved those parts away from her – this had been achieved with something far more impressive.

And then a calloused hand beckoned Anakin towards a blandly impassive face framed by a neatly-trimmed blond beard in which gray-blue eyes gleamed like an idling lightsaber.

And Anakin felt the Force pluck him backwards out of the Viridian kalbornut-shy the corridor was rapidly becoming and set him on his feet next to his wife, and watched as the door pulsed shut in front of him.

o

o

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, High General in the Grand Army of the Republic. A negotiator without peer, a fighter without equal, a man who outstripped his Masters while a Padawan and would dearly love for nothing more than that to happen to him.

He is trusted, respected and admired by all who meet him – he is the example other Masters hold up to their Padawans, it is he whom the Senators name (privately, of course) as the classic example of Jedihood. He is the tireless servant of the Republic.

Or so they might like to think – the truth is, as ever, more complex.

Obi-Wan's 'saber had faded away mere moments after the third droid was dispatched, and was now hanging on his belt as if it had never moved. He inclined his head respectfully at Padme. "Senator Amidala," he said evenly and politely, as if he had met her on the Grand Concourse of the Galactic Senate, the two of them going in quite different directions.

Anakin's blood was still singing to the tune of Shien, and so his voice snapped at Obi-Wan when it might have been better to be calmer. "What are you doing here?" he snarled. Obi-Wan waved his hand and the glowglobe swelled into life above their heads. He cast a significant look at Anakin's thrumming lightsaber – the younger Jedi did not even have the excuse of using it as illumination any longer.

"Beyond the obvious?" Kenobi smiled – the smile Anakin could almost bring himself to hate because it suggested a smug-superiority in the Jedi Master. But, of course, Anakin knew that was impossible. "The Council has discovered intelligence which suggests that Usaki is here – I have been dispatched to find her."

Anakin's eyes glowed with luminous flame in the light of his 'saber. "And kill her?" he asked eagerly. Obi-Wan sighed deeply.

"Not necessarily, Anakin," he said, "The Council is primarily interested in information gathering and the _capture_ of Usaki." His well-manicured face demurred. "Of course, I may be forced to kill her – but that is not the outcome I am seeking." His eyes hardened and locked with the younger man's, looking down – again – at his lit 'saber. "What are _you_ seeking?" It sounded like a Jedi koan, and Anakin treated it as such as he was well-aware Obi-Wan knew why he and Padme were here – Obi-Wan had been one of the strongest voices in the Council arguing for Anakin's accompaniment of the Senator to Kyunden.

"The Kynden ruling council is in league with the Separatists, General Kenobi," Padme said evenly, "I was certain of this before, and now . . ." she winced and touched her burned shoulder, "I am even more certain."

"As young Skywalker would doubtless remind you I would tell him," the Jedi Master smiled softly, reaching into his medikit for a bacta patch and pressing it gently to her wound, "one can never be more certain than certain, but one should always act as if one is." She bowed her head in acknowledgment of his wisdom and blushed at what she perceived as her own naiveté. Her fingers pressed against his for a moment as she lay her hand on the medicinal patch – to Obi-Wan's Force-perception, it was like brushing against a ray shield; he could see but could not touch. She was not open to him.

Or anyone, he suspected – she was a politician, and a very good one indeed. It would not do for her to allow just anyone or everyone to see inside her and into her secret heart. She and he were not so dissimilar, he reasoned – except that Obi-Wan allowed the Force to flow into and out of himself freely. The ripple in the never-ending ocean of the Force that was Obi-Wan was not displayed for all to see, although it was certainly in plain sight. "The fact this planet is certainly a Separatist stronghold adds weight to the possibility Usaki is here," he remarked softly.

"So, what do we do?" asked Anakin eagerly. His 'saber was – finally – extinguished, but his mechanical hand was twitching with interpretive spasms; the bionic replacement trying to express his eager anticipation. Obi-Wan – looking calm in a way Anakin could barely comprehend – gazed evenly at him.

" _We_ do nothing, Anakin – I hunt Usaki as per my orders from the Jedi Council. Yourself and Senator Amidala will return to Coruscant as swiftly as safety allows; your 'saber-play here will doubtless have been relayed to whatever droid command is on this planet." He rasped the side of his beard with his thumb judiciously, "In fact, you have probably lingered here too long." When Anakin's face hardened into petulant defiance, Obi-Wan glanced at him significantly. "Did you hear me, Anakin?"

"I am not under your orders, Master," Anakin said sullenly. The juxtaposition of that form of address and that sentiment made a light smile play on Obi-Wan's and Padme's lips. "I am here as the bodyguard of the Senator, and I go where she does." The Jedi Master sighed and shrugged.

"And I am certain the Senator's mission does not include hunting Dark Jedi who may be able to give us intelligence that can win this war." He locked eyes significantly with the younger man. "I know the path of yojimbo is not easy, Anakin – have you forgotten I myself defended Senator Amidala when she was Queen?"

 _Forget?_ How could he forget? How could he forget the day that he had destroyed the Trade Federation's droid control ship and Qui-Gon had been taken from them all? How could he forget the first great adventure he had been part of and when he had met Padme?

Obi-Wan was speaking, Anakin forced himself to listen. "You have a duty to your charge, Jedi – the Council and the Order would have it no other way. It is better you uphold your word than go gallivanting around with old Obi-Wan on some damn-fool idealistic crusade." Anakin – his soul still singing with the as-yet-unheard accolades for the capture of Usaki – thought his response was informed by concern for his former Master.

"Better that you die against Usaki after fighting her alone than I help you?" he asked aghast. Obi-Wan smiled softly.

"As the Force is my judge, yes," he said. He paused, and his eyes twinkled. "And I think you'll find I am not about to die here, my young apprentice."

o

o

"Well," said Padme, "I suppose that was to be expected."

It was the first time she had spoken since she had told Obi-Wan about the Kyunden ruling council. Anakin nodded grimly and turned to the older Jedi.

"Well?" Anakin snapped, "so much for that idea." Obi-Wan stood easily against the wall, his hand miles from the hilt of his 'saber, looking at the destroyed wreckage of the Senator's ship strewn across the hangar. The Force was ringing with death and destruction like a Glavian lyre, the landscape of spirit painted with smoke-red and blood-blacks, the very air's soul ringing with hatred and violence. The Jedi Master breathed it deep into himself, letting it swirl around in the endless limpid green waterfall that was the light side of the Force, and breathed calm out into the morass of chaos. His eyes – which had closed of their own accord – opened in just the same manner.

"This changes nothing," said Obi-Wan. "You and the Senator simply need to find alternate transport off the planet." Anakin looked like he was about to say they could come with Kenobi, but the Jedi Master interrupted him. "Even assuming my starfighter has remained intact, both of you will not fit on my lap." Padme snickered and managed to turn it into a cough to avoid hurting Anakin's feelings.

"Padme can go with you, there is enough room for two in a Jedi starfighter. I can remain here and . . ." Obi-Wan shook his head, faint exasperation expected from a lesser man but not visible on his face.

"You have neatly swapped our Council-given missions, Anakin – _not_ something that I would like to have to explain to Master Windu or Master Yoda." Obi-Wan peered out from behind the latticed bulkhead the three of them were hiding behind – the hangar was all too quiet for his liking. At the very least, there should have been a crew of droids or Kyundens sifting through the smoking, smoldering wreckage. It could flare into a fire in moments. Anakin would not give up.

"Then we dispatch Usaki together and you and Padme return to Coruscant," he said, "I will find my own way home." The shake of Obi-Wan's head was slightly more definite that before.

"No," he said flatly. "Your mission is _bodyguard_ , Anakin – not merely to defend her, but to guard her. Granted, she would be more than safe with me as she has been before, but your place is by her side." When the younger man's face showed sullen annoyance, Obi-Wan's voice shifted. "You are a Jedi, Anakin," he said sternly, "you are not free to pursue your own ends – no matter how noble – as if you were a private person. You should let desire pass from your life, even desire for the most laudable of motives. Desire is attachment and attachment is a distraction." He paused. "Are we clear on this, Anakin?"

The younger Jedi – just for a moment shorter than the reset cycle on a forcefield – looked as if he might argue, and then the realization of his own youth and naiveté washed over his face. He bowed to Obi-Wan. "You are right, Master – I have not been mindful of the Living Force and I apologize." The older man smiled.

"Besides," he remarked dryly, "that second seat is reserved for Usaki, I intend to bring her in alive." He shifted his weight from the wall and gestured beyond the wreckage of the ship. "There are other hangers through that door – you should be able to borrow a ship and set course for Coruscant. I will descend into the spire-city and begin my hunt for Usaki." He turned to Padme. "Senator Amidala?" he asked, waving her forward as if he held the door open for her at the opera.

She did not move. "General Kenobi," she said seriously, "I am certain Anakin does not wish to neglect my protection." She knew he would do no such thing, but his desire to be the hero, to fix the whole, broken universe would lead to him wanting to have a less-singular focus than the older Jedi demanded. "Neither does he wish to defy the Council or you." Her voice made it clear she was not arguing with Obi-Wan, nor trying to shame her husband. She thought she understood his motivations and the two sides of his argument perfectly.

Obi-Wan knew that – and was also wise enough in the subtle interplays of life to know she may very well be right. He knew how close Senator Amidala and Anakin had been since he was first assigned to protect her on Naboo, and how close they still were. He had always suspected he was, in fact, in love with her – but the Force did not tell him of any need to think beyond that. He himself, the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, had loved another Padawan when he was a few years younger than Anakin – he suspected it was just a natural process of becoming Jedi.

Obi-Wan had, of course, let emotions wash over him like light over water for so long he had no idea of the cauterizing and shattering power of the laser that was Anakin's love. He had simply no frame of reference that would adequately describe the relationship between Padme and Anakin – even if he had been intellectually aware of its nature.

That was not to say that Obi-Wan had not loved – or did not _still_ love – Siri Tachi. But her death was not an open wound any longer; if indeed it ever had been. There had been an instant of rage, a moment of anger that had clouded the crystal-clear clarity of his ordered universe. But then he had mastered those emotions and found he could love with an open heart and let everything that clouded his judgment pass from his life.

He did not know that Anakin thought he could never have loved Siri, simply because Obi-Wan had not slaughtered her killer in cold blood. And Obi-Wan thought Anakin could not truly love Padme, simply because he knew – sadly – such purity was beyond the younger man.

And so all he did was bow before Senator Amidala and say softly. "My lady, there is no Jedi – no man – that I would rather have at my side when I face anything other than Anakin Skywalker." Anakin blushed and began to mutter something. "That does not mean, however, I would suggest he gives up his duty for the sake of either of us. It is his duty and his generosity which make him the man he is." He faced Anakin, "The balance between them is the line of the Force." He gestured again. "Shall we?"

The Senator stepped forward, utterly unprepared for the howl of 'saber ignition and the wash of ozone that poured over her face as her husband's blade batted away the first of countless blaster bolts. And then Anakin and Obi-Wan were at her sides and two lightsabers were whirling in eye-boiling blue-white arcs and she was inside a sphere of falling stars that never reached her.

The Force had sung out a warning to the two Jedi as the hydraulic pistons slammed the blast doors open, revealing serried ranks of battle droids with blasters leveled. A hornet swarm of blaster fire electrified the air around the three of them as the Jedi began to advance inexorably towards the one door that was not filled with battle droids.

And then the menacing bronzium wheels of three destroyer droids rolled through that doorway and uncoiled themselves like Tatooine venom-scorpions stretching in the morning sun, the smoke from vaporized metal and ionized air that coiled around them looking uncommonly like the moisture dew they would soon lick from their mandibles before they started the day's hunt. Shimmering spheres of force englobed the droids and their under-slung heavy cannons began to pulse rhythmically, thick bolts of coruscating power stabbing towards the Jedi.

"Master, droidekas!" Anakin ramped up the speed of his Shien-parries, Obi-Wan's seemingly effortless Soresu didn't seem to change. The bolts reflected from the blades of the 'sabers bounced harmlessly from the shields of the advancing droids. The sheer weight of fire from the destroyers and more mundane battle robots might very well result in the defeat of the Jedi, and certainly would lead to . . .

"Stalemate, Master!" Anakin's arms were a blur, while Obi-Wan was a calm pillar of transparisteel, a window onto a sunlight meadow of the Force, doing his share and more of deflection.

"It's never a stalemate," remarked Obi-Wan dryly, batting a single bolt of blasterfire upward towards the roof of the echoing hangar, "if no-one has won the war isn't over."

For a second, Anakin might have argued – but then one of the supports above their heads battered by the blast Obi-Wan had deflected gave way with a sharp ping of stressing metal and a cascade of drums – fuel drums or lubricant or something of the sort – tumbled to the ground in a torrent of gleaming steel cylinders. They bounced lazily, denting themselves as the flipped over and over and roll across the hanger deck, crashing to the wreckage of the spaceship and blocking the droids' lines of fire.

Before the first of the drums had smashed into the shield of the first droideka, Obi-Wan was in motion – a devastating blend of Soresu and Ataru turning him into a whirling globe of blue-white plasma that rolled over the floor with the fluid grace of a Kalapian ball serpent. As the destroyer droids were knocked backwards, their shields shorting out as they ramped up power to push away the tumbling drums, a hail of blaster fire struck the shimmering sphere of spinning lightsaber blade that surrounded the Jedi Master, every single bolt reflecting karmicly back to strike down a battle droid.

Anakin could only watch in awe and wonder as his former Master reached the droidekas and – before they could reset their shield generators – sliced them to white-hot swarf, his 'saber spinning like a rotor blade. The younger knight saw Kenobi's blade resolve itself into a single bright line that shrank away into nothing, and then the Jedi Master was standing calm as a stone in the doorway surrounded by tumbling pieces of destroyed droidekas that had not even stopped moving.

Anakin grabbed Padme by her upper arm and hurried her through the hangar – practically no droids were left standing, but there was still too much blaster fire for his liking. He waved rolling drums out of their path, his Force-sense and gaze on all the doorways other than the one Obi-Wan had run to – and which he was leading Padme towards – and so he barely registered the ignition of his Master's 'saber and the surge in the living waterfall of the Force that was Kenobi.

He was entirely unprepared for what he saw when he reached his Master – the lean Jedi exchanging a bewildering array of blows with a tall, elegant, shockingly beautiful woman in whose perfectly-manicured hands rested a blood-red blade.


	2. Usaki and Obi-Wan

**A/n :** Please be aware that this chapter involves sexual themes. Nothing overt, but if you think you might be offended, _the best censor is the "Back" button!_ In addition, a number of terms used in this chapter are from the Wookieepedia entry for "lightsaber combat".

This five-chapter story is complete – but if not all of it is published when you read this, check my profile for details of the publishing schedule.

 **Part II : Usaki and Obi-Wan**

This is how it feels to be Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You are facing a Dark Jedi, a master of the Force whose supreme arrogance has turned her inability to conquer her emotions from a destructive disadvantage into the gateway towards the limitless power of Dark Side. In her hands rests the synthetic blade of a Sith bloodsaber, a weapon perhaps capable of shorting out the natural crystal of your own weapon. You face a former apprentice of one of the most deadly Jedi the Order has produced, and whose fighting style shows a dangerous mastery of at least Juyo and possibly Vaapad. You are fighting on a world whose ruling council knows you are aware of their treachery and whose forces are augmented by droids of the Separatists' armies. Although you are not here alone, you are with a Jedi whose eagerness has already cost him a hand of flesh and whose love for the woman beside him will prove a distraction to any and all things. You are not a single target, but you only have a single blade.

You are on hostile ground, facing one of the greatest threats the Order has ever faced, alone and yet not.

Hatred whips around you like the slashing tentacles of the namesake of Mace Windu's fighting style, raw barbs of anger and rage and fueling-fear. The dark power of the Force prickles across your aura, trying to find invasive weaknesses and slither into your physiology and interfere with it. The crimson spear of light that is Usaki's 'saber is a smear of bloodshine against the metallic darkness of the dimly-lit corridor, moving so swiftly you cannot see it coming. She leaps and rolls and flips and dives, seemingly anchored to the walls and ceiling as much as the floor. The long flowing skirt and billowing sleeves of her rancor-leather dress float around her in a Force-gale, the laced bodice tight and inviting over her magnificently muscled and gloriously gorgeous torso. Lust flickers like a Krayt dragon's tongue at your perception, memories of Siri lash between the plates of your emotional armor. Her luminous skin shines with the sweat of exertion and her hauntingly beautiful face is drawn back into a rictus grin of effort and rage – yet the dark Force powers that caress your mind and soul tell you that it is pleasure that contorts her face so.

And you let this storm flow over you like wind through the leaves, like a cascade of water through a luminous river of light. You have no need to reach into the Force, because you have already allowed the Force to reach into you.

The endless cycle of energy that swirls through and around and by all things cascades through you in a perpetual torrent of perfectly pure clarity; that great sparkling stream flows through you and out of you without a single interference or interruption from your conscious mind. And as it flows through you and you flow into the endless pool, there is nothing with which you are not intimately connected, or that is _not_ you.

You are the deck beneath your feet, and the ionized air burned to ozone by the hum of two lightsabers. You are the gleam of the muted glowglobes in Usaki's brilliant green eyes, and you are the vision those eyes behold of yourself with a taut jaw and narrowed eyes and not another display of effort or anger on your face. You are the pressure of her hands on the hilt of her blade, you are the concern and tightly-controlled rage of Anakin running up behind you, you are the even-more tightly-controlled fear and panic of Senator Amidala.

And you are Usaki herself.

You are the well-honed muscles rippling in their embrace of hot leather, the curve of her powerful thighs, the concave planes of her flat stomach, the arc of her long neck that sweeps down into her full breasts. You are the rage and the hatred and the isolation that fuels her anger and her passion and her hollow power, you are the vortex in her heart that seeks to suck you into her and crush you to powder and beyond and try to fill the endless void inside her that always hungered and was never satisfied.

You are the intention of her blows and the movement of you own arms before you have even considered your response. You are all these things, but you are also Obi-Wan Kenobi.

That is why you will win here – because you are submissive to the will of the Force and realize there is nothing more in this universe than that.

This is how it feels to be Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is how a great Jedi makes war.

o

o

This is Usaki Ketsubo Daikatana.

Her limbs – a beautiful organic machine of flesh and blood and bone – move in a framework of curves as beautiful as her body, as powerful as her exquisite face, driving her 'saber in a hooked net of gleaming light that seeks to ravage her opponent. Raw rage flows from her, as if she is a never-ending fountain of crimson emotion, a wellspring of fiery anger that fuels the Dark Side powers she exults in using. She is a devastating warrior, a stunning paragon of womanhood, far beyond the petty loveless charlatans of the Order.

This is what she would have you believe. And sometimes, on those nights when she lies spent but not satiated alongside someone – or some few – and she is too tired to notice her own emptiness, she can almost pretend she believes it.

The truth, as she well knows, is more complex.

There is a hole at the center of Usaki, a void, an empty space. She does not have the furnace heart of a Ventress or the crystallizing coldness of a Dooku. She is a hole punched through reality into nothingness – not even into the sunlit meadow of the Force that is Kenobi's perpetual birthright – and she has been falling and eroding into that hollow void for nearly all of her life.

She cannot bring herself to analyze what might have caused that airlock to blow into the cold void of interstellar space, that eternal hungering nothingness which constantly demands more and is never filled. But – deep in her empty heart – she has some inkling of the truth.

It was not at her birth twenty-nine standard years before that the rot set in. She was born to noble parents in a wealthy country of a pampered planet, a beautiful baby girl and the salvation of her family. It may have begun when political games were played by hereditary retainers more concerned with their status quo than that of her blood, for she was bartered before she was weaned to be married to the eldest son of the ruling Daimyo – a move that would cement the fortunes of her family for decades to come. Their sons would be the great Daimyos, the Senators of the Galactic Republic. Their daughters would command such a high price from the other noble families their name would last until the planet and Republic fell.

The vacuum that blew the walls of heart open might have started before she could walk, with the hormonal injections and glandular-replacement therapies and genetic restructuring which were designed to tweak her adult appearance towards the exotic eroticism of the women of the Core Worlds – taller and more curvaceous, voluptuously sexual and improbably alluring. And with those burning green eyes like leaves under ice – as rare as the teeth of _tori_ on her home planet, the eyes only the gods had.

The hypno-indoctrination and psychotherapy that had made her borderline-obsessed with maintaining her physical appearance and which twisted her psyche into demure obedience could not have been responsible for it, because when she was taken by the Jedi Master from her cosseted and pampered existence he had scoured her mind clean of them. He had _said_ so – and she was certainly no longer demure or obedient.

And yet even now her body was a paragon of perfection, with not a hair out of place and her make-up perfect and her skin glowing from the Mon Calamari seaweed creams and the Mustafar volcanic sand-scrubs. Had the Jedi torn enough out of her, or too much?

When she was as honest as she ever became with others, she would lie and tell them the things done to her when younger were why she was the way she was. And then the shame of her own weakness and the fact she had lied would come; either her 'saber or her thighs would engulf them, her Vaapad or her erotic embrace would take them and crush them to her and suck what they were into her. But she was never filled, never satisfied – the ravenous void would always be the same infinite emptiness it was before.

But in her darkest and coldest moments, when she was totally alone and not even the Dark Side filled her with slimy, writhing warmth and her hands fell away from her body in disgust and realization nothing would fill her, she knew when it had truly begun.

It had begun when she realized what she could gain for them was more valuable to her family than anything else they possessed. It had begun when she realized they valued her not for what she was but for what she could achieve. It had begun when she realized she could have anything she could imagine simply by asking, "I want."

 _I want_. Such a simple phrase. A simple statement that because her name and the very expression of what she was. I _want_.

No-one ever thought to ask her what she might _need_. They had all rushed around, falling over their robes and their ceremonial swords to bring her whatever she said she wanted – toys and exotic pets, carved necklaces of japor, Thyferrian icoberries sauteed in hallucinogenic wines from Barkhesh, Twi'lek dancing girls trained as _geisha_ – priceless treasures from the far-flung corners of the galaxy she had no need for, and which only increased the pressure from without as her soul became emptier and emptier.

I want, I want, _I want_.

And then the stocky man with the skin as dark as Canton-plum sauce and the sword of light came to her world.

She had been young – unformed and unfinished, precocious and precious, a work in progress and nothing more. She had watched with puzzled interest as he introduced himself as a Jedi Knight; the Jedi were legends, of that she was certain – warrior-monks from the Core Worlds, impossibly powerful Samurai-figures with preternatural abilities. Not in living memory had one come to her planet – far out and isolated on the galactic rim, nominally a member of the Republic but in reality far divorced from it. Their civilization was older and greater than the petty squabbles of the democrats in the Coruscanti Senate, hereditary autocracy ruling with a fist of jade inside a silken glove.

What had brought the Jedi to her world, she never learned – but she learned what his purpose quickly became.

 _A vergence in the Force_. That was the phrase he used – a vergence in the Force. And his dark eyes quickly settled on her – scarcely a child, growing into something quite unlike the rest of the Court, the promise of power for her family for decades to come. He had spoken with her parents – negotiating, she had assumed, for the right to marry her. She had smiled; even at that tender age she had known the power her union with the Daimyo's heir would bring her family. They would never agree to it, no matter what the outlandish and uncouth Core World _gaijin_ offered them. What could he possibly have to barter for a jewel as bright as she?

And then the Jedi had come to her and offered her his bartering chip – _come and I will train you as a Jedi_.

Suddenly, a whole new world was opened to her innocent eyes – for all of her short life she had been made into something somebody else wanted, an expression of another person's desire. Her genetically-coded beauty and seductiveness, her training as a Daimyo-ko of fine breeding – these were for the benefit and pleasure and desire of her future husband. Her betrothal to the Daimyo's son was for the advancement and strength and desire of her family. Her family's joining to the ruling clan was for the elevation and acknowledgment and desire of her family's retainers.

She was, she realized, nowhere in this. She was given whatever she wanted, because she was already giving exactly what everyone else wanted to them.

And so, in a twist of hideous irony that she could not appreciate and Mace Windu was unable to see, she went with the Jedi Master to the Jedi Order because she did not want to be a servant to anyone else. She became a Jedi Apprentice because of her own desire. Because it was what _she_ wanted.

Her family did not let her go willingly, and she was too young to remember the first time men killed over her. It was not to be the last, although the later times she would engineer and exult in – watching them fight for her affections, for her whiplash caresses that soothed her wounded soul with brief, torrid ecstasies.

And so she became a Jedi Apprentice, and later Padawan. She learned the arts of the Force from one of the greatest living Masters, and for many years there was nothing she wanted more than that – to learn and to add to her power and to be the very greatest Jedi she could be. She took to Vaapad like a mynock to power-cables – something which should have warned Windu that not all was as it seemed with his new Padawan, for Vaapad's power drew itself from the darker aspects of the Force; not quite the black realm of the Sith, but from the emotions that most Jedi steered well clear of. Practitioners of Vaapad had to learn to enjoy the fight, to hate the enemy, to channel their fear and rage and bloodlust into the most-deadly of the seven forms of lightsaber combat.

And still she _wanted_.

She wanted _more_. She wanted _everything_ , and for reasons she could not fathom. She wanted wisdom and restraint and even – paradoxically – freedom from desire. She wanted to be the most powerful Jedi, the greatest warrior, the finest negotiator. She wanted more transitory things as well – the most elegant clothes, the most beautiful jewels, the greatest accolades.

Her Master counseled surrender to the Force as a means of overcoming desire, of allowing things to pass from her life. But it was not that she wanted to preserve what she had – because she knew she really had _nothing_. It was a ravenous, salt, black desire to have _something, anything_ to fill the void her perpetual _I want_ had carved within her.

And then her body matured and she blossomed from a child into a woman, a stunning physical paragon with lusts and desires and wants and what she thought were _needs_ she had never even conceived of before and which she was ill-prepared to defend against.

Suddenly, her power increased tenfold, a hundredfold – not over the Force, but in baser ways. She realized it, exulted in it, knowing her merest glance and coquettish flick of her hair could twist men as easily as any Mind Trick. She disdained her robes in favor of form-fitting jumpsuits, provocatively exercising to flaunt her physicality in the Temple playrooms.

She was the sweaty, torridly-pleasurable downfall of more than one Padawan, and the death of more than one innocent but weak citizen in the bars of downlevel Coruscant. In moments like that, she felt fulfilled – or thought she was. Brief emotion flared through her, and though it was corrupted and dark and only brought her pain in the morning, for those moments it soothed the gaping wounds in her psyche. She knew she was debasing herself for transitory pleasures of the flesh, and yet there was nothing she could do about it. Her desire had become an all-consuming force that found a shape to mold itself into in her burgeoning sexuality.

She fled the Order before the full truth of what she was became apparent. The Order pursued her, of course – she told herself it was out of jealousy and hatred of what she had discovered; for she almost managed to convince herself the Jedi were fools for not allowing themselves the pleasures of fulfilled desire. An ignorant, puritanical Order of loveless charlatans – _hypocritical_ loveless charlatans, given how easily some of them had fallen to her wiles.

She did not realize the real reason the Jedi pursued her was the real reason they had fallen to her; that she was already slipping further and further away from the light and towards the darkness, that her own raw desire was being channeled into something dark and hideous and altogether terribly powerful that sought to fill its own endless void with the pain and lust and longing of others.

The Jedi knew she was too dangerous to be left to consume herself, collapsing inwards like a dead star falls into a black hole, her own dreadful gravity drawing those around her into her crushing darkness.

And so for years she fled the Jedi, selling her services to the highest bidder and selling her body and affections for far less, trying to fill the void within her. She herself cannot remember all the assassinations and assignations she had been a part of; the tale of how she ended here, in passive league with the Confederacy of Independent Systems and a pupil of Dooku half-tormented by frustrated desire for him, facing a Jedi who exemplifies everything she hates and wants to be would be too complex to relate.

It is enough to say what she is.

This is Usaki Ketsubo Daikatana. And she _wants_.

o

o

As the red chained-lighting of Usaki closed on him, Obi-Wan held his stance. He met the flurry of anger and rage and hatred and lust and longing of Vaapad with Soresu. His sky-blue blade moved in a bewildering defensive velocity so fast that the enumeration of a single exchange would have been an advanced okuden for learned Padawans.

Usaki's blade was everywhere, her face snarling and snapping, Force attacks on the physical, psychic, physiological and spiritual planes stabbing at him. He met them all with Soresu; more than a fighting-style, a philosophy of combat, of life. His blade was never truly fast, but was just fast enough – spoiling the aim or the angle or the speed of one of her attacks even as he leaned away from the ones that were coming at him before the afterimage of the 'saber had faded from his retinas. His psyche moved just enough so the more subtle Dark Side attacks slid from him, and woven into his physiology was a rippling net of the Living Force that deflected the poisonous barbs of her hate.

Usaki snarled, and drew deeper into her own personal void of lust and longing, ramping up the speed and ferocity of her attacks, the hurricane of the Force cracking her leather dress like a thousand whips, sweat boiling off her like condensation from a sublight-thruster cowling. Obi-Wan centered himself, relaxed everything he was, let go of desire and offered himself to the Force.

He closed his eyes and fell in a perfect dive into Soresu, a limpid, ever-churning waterfall whose currents he simply had to respect and be ruled by in order to win. There was no desire, no wanting, no needs – there was only the Force. All of Usaki's desire-driven attacks failed against his desireless self. As patient as stone, Obi-Wan simply waited for Usaki to make her mistake.

The combat changed with the ignition note of Anakin's 'saber. Obi-Wan's eyes snapped open, shifting from Soresu into Ataru in an instant, leaping towards Usaki, trying to drive her back from his former Padawan. But she leaped herself and slashed at him, their blades sparking, the two of them spiraling around each other like rutting raptor-bats, and she landed sure-footed in front of the most dangerous Jedi in living memory.

Obi-Wan could sense the exultation and confidence in the young man's eyes. Obi-Wan knew the younger Jedi knew he was a greater warrior than she.

He also knew she knew exactly what she was doing.

Anakin's first strike was double-handed overhead chop, a perfect Djem So blow that bent her elbows and nearly buckled her knees – no normal human and few Jedi possessed the physical power to meet Anakin Skywalker toe-to-toe. He bore down on her creaking arms with every ounce of his mechanical and Force-driven strength, driving her lightsaber inexorably towards her shoulder, putting a line of scorch through the leather of her coat and into the skintight armorweave bodyglove she wore underneath. Ozone and charring hair fizzled in the air as Anakin snarled like a Corelian garru. He wanted her _dead_.

He _wanted_.

He desired, he sought, he hungered. That was the chink in his armor and with a speed he did not have time to appreciate she was inside his guard and inside his mind and then she was above him and raining blows down on him, dominating the duel. Out of pure desperation, Obi-Wan dived into the combat, moving close enough that her 'saber crisped his robe, and wove a gleaming net of light between his former apprentice and the Dark Jedi.

He wanted to defend him, and that moment of distraction cost him dear. Usaki's elbow smashed him in the jaw, sending his head spinning away with the rest of him following it, and then she jumped into the air, kicked Anakin in the chin, and somersaulted over his head, landing next to Padme.

The instant she had been inside Anakin's defenses had been enough. She knew what he wanted. What he loved. Why he was here.

She cocked a single hand as if she were Yuukoku holding the apple of temptation in a kabuki play, and suddenly Padme couldn't breathe. It wasn't as if there was a pressure on her throat, blocking her laboring lungs. It wasn't as if something was constricting her ribs, preventing her chest from moving. It was simply as if she _couldn't breathe_. Not a single action in the whole complex sequence was possible for her; she couldn't inhale, her diaphragm wouldn't move. Had she been consciously aware of it, she wouldn't have been surprised to find her hemoglobin failing to oxidize as it met air. Her vision dimming to gray, she began to buckle.

And all Usaki did was hold her 'saber at mocking ready, pointing it at Anakin's face and daring him to come closer. For the second time in as many hours, he stood in mute horror and indecision.

Before Anakin could move, Obi-Wan was there, leaping over his head to land with his boots firmly driving Usaki's wrist to the deck. His 'saber was unlit, perhaps even clipped to his belt, and as he stretched out his hand Anakin felt the Force twist and writhe. Padme convulsed like an inflating dirigible, a power as artificial as that which had choked her filling her lungs and blood with oxygen. Usaki cursed enticingly and hauled her blade from the melted hole in the deck, it meeting Obi-Wan's re-ignited 'saber in mid-air.

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan's clipped Coruscanti accent was audible over the crackle and hum of the lightsabers. "Take Senator Amidala and go! Your primary mission is her safety!" Obi-Wan's eyes were fixed on his deadly swordplay, giving ground against Usaki as a means of getting her further away from Padme and Anakin, being driven back towards the hangar. So he could not see the moment of rebellion on Anakin's face, of his desire to stay and defend his friend and mentor.

Perhaps the fact Obi-Wan had consistently shown him up and done a better job of defending Padme might have made him want to stay closer to him, but Anakin's own personal myth of invulnerability had been dented by the ease with which Usaki had threatened Padme. He knew he was the better warrior – better than Obi-Wan and certainly better than Usaki. What had shaken him was that, despite his greater skill and power, the two of them had dominated the situation.

He wasn't _irrelevant_! He was the Chosen One! He had been chosen . . . !

To defend Padme.

 _Ah . . ._

Inclining his head to Obi-Wan in the bow of a student in the presence of the Master, he turned and grasped the wheezing Padme by her upper arm and – supporting her with the Force – hurried her down the corridor.

o

o

"Well." Usaki spoke for the first time, a voice as soft as silk and quite unlike the frenzied movements of her body. She stood in a Shien-ready stance, flaunting her figure, her head bent and turned slightly to the side, her green eyes peering coquettishly at him from behind a tumbled fringe of glossy black hair, gazing seductively from under heavy lids. Her perfect crimson mouth moved with fluid enticement, her tongue lubricating her teeth and lips with a glossy sheen. "I see the children have left," she purred.

Obi-Wan's blade shrank away and he faced her calmly, a 'saber's length between them in the corridor thick with ozone and sundered metal. "I will accept your surrender, Usaki," he said brusquely. "Give me your lightsaber and return with me to Coruscant to face the Council." She laughed, a tinkling tumble of crystalline raindrops.

"Still so formal, Obi-Wan?" she breathed, moving towards him, her hand extended to caress his face but stopping a respectful distance from the formidable warrior. The Jedi, well-aware of her intentions before they transmitted themselves into actuality, did not move. "When did you make Knight, Obi-Wan?"

"Twelve years ago," he said quietly, and then added with an air of finality, "and it is Master Kenobi now." He couldn't tell if the greater emphasis was on the title or the name. He felt a twist of anger within her, and a brief flurry against his psyche from her invasive Force tendrils. For the briefest of moments, his mind was overwhelmed with memories of Siri – perhaps a result of her attempts to find her way into him, perhaps a sub-conscious defense mechanism.

She sighed, defeated. "So be it," she said wearily. And then her lit blade swept up and he had to leap backwards to avoid having his face sliced off, landing with perfect balance on the litter of droideka parts in the doorway.

She lunged for him, a howling dervish of whipping Vaapad, even as she reached into the Force and made the few heavy blasters that remained intact under Obi-Wan's boots spasm and spit fire. He caught the bolts and threw them back at her. Contemptuously, she battered them aside and pressed her attack, vaulting over his head and out into the wrecked hangar, the droids still standing around holding their fire to avoid hitting Usaki. Obi-Wan spun to face her, his blade moving of its own accord. He had the measure of her by now; he was more than capable of holding his own against her attacks.

She knew it too – she needed more.

The detritus of the dismantled droids and the wreckage of the Republic ship provided just that – she leaped out of range of his 'saber and flexed her mind, hurling fragments of the ruin at him. Pieces of 'saber-sliced droid and cannon-sundered spacecraft flew at Obi-Wan, threatening to shatter his bones and crush his flesh. He reached into the Force and Ataru and vaulted and dived over them, slicing a few of them with his blade, deflecting more with the power of his mind.

Calmly, patiently, he waited for her to make her mistake.

Howling now, her anger grew and she was on top of him, her blade everywhere, moving so fast it was a red tinge to the light and nothing more. Finally, her madness overloaded Obi-Wan's defense.

And so he opened himself up to it.

He opened a hole in his Soresu defense, letting her rage and hatred flow into him. Her 'saber followed, driving deep into his unprotected underbelly, a grim snarl of exultation on her face. She could sense her victory moments away, sense the destruction of this smug, frigid, puritanical Jedi at her hands. And that picture was so clear in her mind, holding so very much of her attention she did not notice it was a trap.

Her blade dove for Obi-Wan's chest as her anger and violence poured into him. And then he whirled to the side, trapping her 'saber with an elegant single-handed bind. He caught her hatred and held it, looking at it with his Force perception as he might examine a flawed gem that could still be cut for jewelery, a gnarled stump that could be used for firewood, a ruined length of plasteel that would make a serviceable mace.

He swept their 'sabers over their heads and – with every ounce of her own desire feeding the blow – punched her in the stomach with his left hand. She coughed and crumbled, unable to breathe for wholly natural reasons.

Obi-Wan grabbed her by the back of her neck and slammed her throat down onto his raised knee. And then he twisted her perfect hair around his fist and hauled her head back as roughly as any lover had done, ripping strands out by the roots, and drove his forehead into the bridge of her nose with an ugly crunch.

It was only the Force flowing through her body that kept her alive and conscious. She struggled weakly in his grip, her 'saber trapped, being man-handled bodily like some Cytherian harlot. The Jedi's skills at what looked awfully like Dun Moch had taken her completely by surprise – that was _her_ specialty! How _dare_ he! Now she wanted to be him even more, if that were possible.

He jerked his arm and threw her unceremoniously into a pile of sundered metal. He breathed deeply, inhaling the calm of the Force and exhaling the remnants of her rage, stepping back into a deep Soresu stance with his blade angling forwards and the first two fingers of his off hand extended before him. A single lunge and it would all be over – Obi-Wan would perform the Cho Mai on her and he could lash her in electrobinders and carry her back to Coruscant. But the Jedi Knight that Obi-Wan was instinctively settled back into his Soresu rather than press his advantage.

Had it been Anakin rather than Obi-Wan, there would have been no question of delay – he would have made that lunge. But Anakin might not have stopped with the Cho Mai, opting instead for the Shiak that would have charred her heart to ash. And the Jedi that was Anakin Skywalker should never have to be placed in a situation where he might have to resort to Dun Moch. Obi-Wan honestly did not know what such a thing might do to him – since Obi-Wan had performed the Sai Tok on Maul on Naboo, he had realized the dangers of actions that might seem to be carried out for the most noble of motives. The line between the Dark and Light Sides of the Force was the width of a shadow.

Obi-Wan did not walk that line. But – just once or twice – he might leap on there; just to remind himself that the spice was _not_ fresher on the other side of the fence.

He jumped down from the line that he knew was as sharp as the edge of a razor soaked in blood and made to perform the perfect Cho Mai . . .

"Open fire!" snapped Usaki, and the air was suddenly sharp and metallic with the taste of ionization. Before the words had even left her mouth, he was in motion, a globe of flashing Soresu battering blaster bolts away from him, not a few of them flying directly for her face. He wondered what her objective was – for she could not approach him through the howling storm of gunfire, and was even now having to do her own fair share of deflection simply to avoid being shot in the back; he was more than capable of dealing with far denser concentrations of blaster shots than this.

And then she ran for the forcefield that was the hangar doors, her 'saber lit and flashing in her hand, and he understood.

Two slashes of her blade destroyed the projectors on one side of the 'field, and it tore backwards like a curtain of shimmering light, shorting out and crackling raggedly on the other side. Beyond the gaping portal, the ice-cold scouring hyperwinds of the upper reaches of the Kyunden atmosphere whirled past, sucking everything in the hangar – air, droids, wreckage, Jedi – towards it and out into the bleak emptiness of the stratosphere.

Usaki had found another way of expressing her state of self.

Obi-Wan could have easily remained in the hangar – the Force could have anchored him like a Mon Calamari limpet to the floor while the droids frantically tried to stay upright. A few sweeps of his blade and they would have tumbled into wreckage thanks to their own blasterfire.

But Usaki had just used the Force to angle the skirt and sleeves of her dress into an improvised aerofoil, and she rode the howling winds out into the perpetual gale, being swept from Obi-Wan's tearing sight in moments.

With a sigh that expressed exasperation she had to make it so difficult, he let go of the floor and jumped, diving into the bleak unknown. The void yawned open to meet him, and not even the Jedi Master could suppress the sense of queasiness that twisted his guts as he saw just how very _far_ he had begun to fall.


	3. Chase

**A/n:** Small shout-out to Roisin Dubh; this chapter references her _excellent Star Wars_ story "Consequences".

This five-chapter story is complete – but if not all of it is published when you read this, check my profile for details of the publishing schedule.

 **Part III : Chase**

Through scouring icy-sharp hyperwinds, through solid blades of air that threatened to tear his lightsaber from his hand and suck his eyes from his head like a Tatooine sand-leech, Obi-Wan Kenobi fell.

He fell between the massive spires, vertical lines streaming past as he dropped hundreds of meters through the thin atmosphere, opening himself up to the Force and letting it blow through him like the wind through his robes. Below him, Usaki fell slower, the leather wings of her skirt and sleeves arresting her tumble through the air, her Dark Side power giving her control over where and how she fell. She gestured at the heavy defense emplacements studded on the side of the spire – they convulsed and spat photonic death towards Obi-Wan, galvened particle beams capable of vaporizing a starfighter.

The Jedi Master tucked in his limbs and tumbled, rolling between the cannons' fire with unnatural athleticism and subtle use of the Force. His 'saber flared into blue-white light a split second before he impacted one of the beams – there was no chance of the blade deflecting _it_ , but it might deflect the blade. And if he were gripping the hilt of his 'saber tightly enough, it might just deflect _him_ rather than shattering his bones and blasting him to fragments.

The blast from the galvened beam pushed him into an even tighter spin, sending him plunging down faster than gravity said was possible. Usaki's feet were just touching down on a landing deck on which several heavy starfighters were resting when Obi-Wan's spinning form careened into her, his blade slicing and stabbing. She lost her balance and tumbled, falling to the ground, leaping back to her feet again as Obi-Wan sliced into the ferrocrete deck where her shoulder had been a splintered second before, and vaulting over the wing of a starfighter, kicking Obi-Wan in the chin as she did so.

Each of them took a moment to re-orient themselves – Obi-Wan reaching into the Force to anchor himself to stability, Usaki pulling the chaos of the wind and the fall into the Force. And then Usaki leaped for Obi-Wan again, somersaulting over the wing of the starfighter, slashing it from the body of the ship with her blade. Fuel, as clear and sharp as Corellian vodka, spilled onto the deck, instantly vaporizing and turning into mist in the churning air. As she span over his head, Obi-Wan leaned back to follow her, their blades sparking off each other chastely, and then her feet hit the deck behind him and she was running. And then Obi-Wan realized it was a feint.

The wing of the starfighter – a metric ton or more of gamma-welded durasteel – swung back towards him, as if Usaki had just invented some new form of delta-wing fighter. Rather than try to directly oppose her Force powers with his, Obi-Wan chose the path of least resistance – he Force pushed down on the wing and leaped upwards, spiraling away a microsecond before the 'saber-cut metal of the wing, glowing white hot, gouged a rending track along the flank of the fighter and then bit into the ferrocrete deck.

Usaki popped the canopy latches on another starfighter and began to warm the sublight engines with a flex of her mind as she jumped for the cockpit. Her left hand was reaching for the control yoke and the cannon trigger even as her right was clipping her lightsaber to the inside of her skirt and gesturing to flick the cannons' safety off. She didn't look behind her, instead feeling for where the Jedi Master was by sensing the calm amid the storm, as she gripped the control yoke. She swung herself into the cockpit, firing the ship's cannons one handed as she did so.

It might have been the blaster bolts or it might have been the sparks from the durasteel wing scraping the ferrocrete floor, but the misted fuel ignited in an incandescent fireball brighter than a solar flare. Usaki slammed the canopy down the instant she was inside the cockpit, sealing the latches with a surge of the Force and smashing the control yoke against the forward rest, cannons blazing. Autosystems darkened the front panels of the transparisteel canopy as protection against the glare as swiftly as a Viridian night, and the HUD immediately imposed a sketch-work pattern of green lines on the gloss-black surface.

 _Soresu your way out of_ that _, you Coruscanti prude!_ she thought loud enough to be heard. The starfighter was picking up speed now, warning bleeps and pings inside the cockpit telling her of the damage the burning wreck of the ruined starfighter was causing to her own ship. She burst through the fireball, wrestling with the control yoke and reaching into the Force to dominate the damaged control surfaces into submission. She angled the fighter and screamed upwards, up the long column of fall she and Obi-Wan had tumbled down.

The blacked-out windows cleared as the autosystems realized the danger of glare was past just in time to reveal Obi-Wan Kenobi tapping politely on the transparisteel. His robes were singed and his dark-sand hair streaked with char, but his face still bore the same, infuriatingly handsome and seductively calm, gentle smile. "Can I come in?" his chiseled lips articulated silently – even if the canopy had not been down she could never have heard him with the howl of the hyperwinds scouring past. His 'saber flared into a fountain of blue plasma and stabbed into the cockpit, burning through the transparisteel in an instant. The canopy turned pitch black around the wound, simple-minded droid systems assuming the plasma coruscation of the 'saber was explosion flare.

Her own blade had sparked into life, deflecting his weapon from a disemboweling strike and – instead – carving it through the control yoke of the craft. She snarled and gestured – the explosive bolts on the canopy blew and suddenly she was standing, anchored by the Force like him, on the upper surface of a careening, uncontrolled craft.

For an instant, the two of them stood a 'saber's length and a lifetime apart, just looking at each other. And then Usaki snarled and angled her blade into Vaapad. "Shall we dance, Obi-Wan?" she howled over the hurricane-strength wind, the sleeves and skirt of her dress flicking and snapping in the gale. Obi-Wan, seeming to stand like an extension of the craft's own control vanes and wings, dipped his head politely.

"I'll sit this one out," he yelled back at her, shoving towards her with a gesture of banishment or censure. And then the Kashyyyk-raptor-grip the Force had given to her broke and she was suddenly shoved backwards, flying off the starfighter, tumbling helplessly.

Obi-Wan sprang for her – as much as he would like to keep as far away from this woman who was a simple whirlwind of death with a 'saber in her hand, he could not afford to let her get out of his sight for a moment. He dived for her tumbling body, grabbing it with the Force, orienting she and he in the air to each other and – as the doomed starfighter crashed into a spire with enough force to make it shudder – grasped her left arm by the wrist with his left hand. And as the smoky fireball blossomed to his right, she snarled and brought her blade up.

There was no Jedi restraint in the way she fought, there was no sense of self-preservation. Realizing the force of her blows would knock them apart in moments, she returned the favor and gripped his wrist. Held close enough to kiss, the Force bonded them so closely and tightly the speed and intensity of the battle ramped upwards; she could feel his intentions as clearly as the well-toned muscles pressing against her body, and he could read her intentions as clearly as he could smell her sweat.

It was Soresu and Vaapad, up close and personal. Her blade whipped and flashed so fast it could barely be seen, a smear of bloodshine against the screaming movement of their perpetual fall. His blade flickered like a Dagobah mist phantom, never moving a millimeter more than was necessary, deflecting without effort. The wind blew them apart, spinning the two of them in different directions, bound by their Force-grip on each other's wrists. They spun around each other, now back to back, now chest to chest, top to tail and back again, spinning like Twi'lek gladiators tied by their lekku for the amusement of the Hutts.

But this was no amateur duel – no matter how much she looked like the poster-girl on a Kessel miner's locker, she was an unrivaled fighter. He may have been the greatest negotiator in the universe, but that didn't mean he wasn't a master warrior. The two of them fell one hundred meters and exchanged over a thousand blows – pure Vaapad ferocity meeting Soresu calm, all-out attack hitting all-in defense. No fatigue, no wound, no success, no failure.

Impasse.

The Force sang out to Obi-Wan, informing him of an approaching spire. No, not a spire – one of the thin radio antenna towers that ringed the edge of the cooling sink that ran through the core of the spire from the bottom to the top. Billowing clouds of condensing steam were roiling around them. There were two-dozen or so of these towers, each one hundred meters tall and one hundred meters apart, spaced equally around the perimeter of the cooling sink. The top of the wall of the sink was an unfenced walkway about a 'saber's length wide with a drop of hundreds of meters onto the sloping outer surface of the spire-city to one side, and a drop of kilometers through the heart of the city on the other. To call this surface a walkway was to ignore the fact it was slick and slippery with algal slime and the vermiform creatures that crawled and slithered amid the green mucous, and that any clear path was blocked every few steps by a guy wire as taut as the string of a Jafforian lute, supporting the radio towers in the hyperwinds.

The chance of landing on one of the towers was tiny – their top surface was about as wide as Obi-Wan's shoulders. Neither Obi-Wan nor Usaki wanted to fight on the algae-slick edge of the hollow tube that was the cooling sink, and neither wanted to tumble to either side. War made for strange bedfellows indeed as a combined Force-push shoved them twisting and spinning towards one of the antenna towers. For an instant, the two of them were inside each other in a way that neither of them had expected – two supreme Force users physically joined, knowing each other intimately through their duel, each reaching into the Force to accomplish precisely the same thing.

Something stammered in Obi-Wan's mind and heart – memories of Siri, the curiosity of what Padme and Vandalyn _could_ mean if someone let them, Tarkalian coffee shared with Shaak Ti . . . and then Usaki was controlling their fall because she was used to this invasion, used to her body being the temporary property of another, used – quite simply – to being _used_.

His boots landed on the narrow circular top of the radio tower, sliding on the steam-slick plasticrete surface until he reached into the Force and anchored himself, cat-footed, to the silky coldness. Usaki took advantage of his moment of distraction and broke away from the wrist-to-wrist warrior's handshake, wrapping one shapely thigh around his waist and hooking one elegantly-turned ankle around his calf. Holding their flaring and steam-gouting 'sabers above them with the toned muscles of her right arm she pressed herself against Obi-Wan from crotch to sternum, her gloved hand insidious and tangling in his hair. "My, my," she purred, "what's a nice Jedi Master like you doing with a _nasty_ girl like me, Master Kenobi?"

Suddenly, Obi-Wan began to have a _very bad feeling about this_.

o

o

Anakin and Padme hurried along the corridors of the vast Kyunden spire-city, their steps dogged by the feeble little battle droids of the Trade Federation. Had it not been for his Force awareness, Anakin might have been pleased with their progress. He had lost count of the number of droids he had surgically dismantled with precise 'saber strikes or deflected blasterfire. Neither he nor Padme were seriously hurt and his Force powers remained undiminished.

But he knew that he and Padme were being herded towards something – or perhaps just away from the hangars and landing pads. The central controlling intelligence of the droids – whether their control nexus or the Dark Jedi Obi-Wan was currently getting all the attention from – certainly didn't want them getting any closer to the spacecraft and any chance of getting off-planet. His Force-perception told him they were being pushed further in and further down the massive needle that was the spire-city. He knew that at the center of the spire-city was the massive cooling sink – the great cylinder that ran from the very bottom to the very top, providing warmth to the inner core of the kilometer-high edifice. The water that was boiled by the geothermal energy was directed up the gigantic chimney after it had spun the turbine blades, to cool and condense as it gave up its heat to the thermal exchangers that dotted the inner surface of the cooling sink. A perpetual rain dripped from the walkways and gantries that cut across the diameter and chords of the eight-hundred-meter-wide tube at various levels, splashing down into a deep lake of water that was recycled back to the geothermal power plants.

Anakin had already been under that lake once today, in the maintenance tunnels where he and Padme had been discovered. And he had no desire to return there – he needed to be high in the spire-city, at the very least on the outer skin. There would be no spacecraft to be borrowed deep in the spire-city, certainly not ones with integral hyperdrive capability.

But that was just where he absolutely could not get to – the doors that would have lead him there were code-locked and too thick to be quickly-sliced by his 'saber. The lighter concentration of droids seemed to be nearer the center of the spire – he couldn't advance because of his duty as a bodyguard for Padme and the fact she could not defend herself. She was carrying a droid blaster now, and was a passable shot – certainly superior to many of the clone troopers with which Anakin had served – but she was certainly no Jedi.

Of course, few were, and Anakin's frustration with the fact that the presence of the woman he was supposed to be protecting was the reason he couldn't protect her was causing no little frustration of its own. Even as he backed into a vast open chamber, protecting Padme with his body and flashing Shien deflection. The Force was a churning, chaotic whirlpool around him, a thundercloud swirling to break as a storm of dark lightning. He was the eye of that storm – he looked calm, but he wanted to blow them all away.

The Force told him that a heavy set of blast doors had opened at his back, and the air was suddenly hot and humid and cloying. His Shien redoubled, his arms moving as a blur. But the droids were wise, or at least programmed well – they were firing just enough to prevent him and Padme form advancing, but not enough to give him enough deflected shots to thin their ranks fast enough. He snarled, no longer just deflecting the bolts but actually battering them away. Every few seconds he had to give ground or be shot – and that meant Padme had to give ground or be sliced by his 'saber.

He needed the droids to shoot him with _more firepower_. Paradoxically, that would be enough to answer all his worries – he could strike them down with all his hatred and advance forward, stop being herded towards the central core of the spire.

His wish was answered; a Correlian-flush in 'sabers. Behind the ranks of the weedy little battle droids five droidekas clattered into place, springing open like ripe Nabor-berry fruits and with their gleaming shields winking into existence in an instant. Anakin cursed as the heavy cannons began to pulse, shearing and shattering through the ranks of droids in front of them and then battering against his own spinning sphere of arcing blue plasma.

The destroyers were advancing, every step a shot and every shot a step. Anakin battered the bolts back to hit the few remaining battle droids, but after they fell there were no more valid targets – the shots bounced from the globes of energy that surrounded the droidekas with no more difficulty than water from the skin of a Kaminoan. Without warning, the doors to either side pulsed open and more droideka's rolled into view – Anakin and Padme were now bracketed on three sides. He couldn't hope to defend her from that sort of assault – he couldn't be in three places at once.

 _I'm the greatest Jedi in the universe!_ his mind snarled, _I'm better than this!_

"Anakin!" screamed Padme, breaking his arrogant reverie. He turned to look at her, effortlessly deflecting blaster bolts as his conscious mind slipped from the task at hand to wonder why she was screaming. And then he noticed that his body had been halfway towards running at the droidekas and trying to slice through their ray shields with his 'saber – a hopeless task at best.

There was absolutely nothing else for it – he and Padme retreated through the doors to her back, the doors that were billowing steam and condensation, and through which the sound of the blaster fire echoed with the noise of a very big, very tall, open-ended _tube_.

Anakin began to have a _very bad feeling about this_.

o

o

This is how it feels to be Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You have fought this Dark Jedi to a standstill, pitting your Soresu against her Vaapad, and while the fighting has been civilized and controllable you have had the better of it.

Now, chaos has broken free and she has been inside your defenses and she is altogether more than you can handle.

It is just the Dark Side of the Force, you tell yourself, as your body itself is treacherous and responds to her. Your mind is full of her, curvaceous and deceptively soft in your arms, wrapped around your body in tight-packed, leather-clad flesh. Her perfume and sweat fills your nostrils and mouth and you can taste her on your tongue and in your lungs. She and you are haloed in a cloud of steam which can't even come close to condensing on the junction of your bodies that runs from ankle to throat.

Her eyes are green as leaves under ice, her lips as red as the humming saber above your head, her skin warm olive and her hair black as night. She is beautiful, and she is evil, and you shouldn't care about either of them because _compassion_ will be your undoing.

For a second, she has you, and both of you know it.

And part of you welcomes that.

This is how it feels to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, right now.

o

o

This is Padme Amidala with her back to the wall.

The wall she has her back to is her husband, and the two of them are standing on a two-meter-wide gantry that describes a chord through an impossibly high tube. Below them, the tube vanishes into the billowing, vague nothingness of the clouds of steam. Above them, it rises into a tiny circle of scoured-blue sky. A constantly draught blows upwards, pulling the air and steam upwards thanks to the constant, sucking hyperwinds across the top of the cooling sink.

Her husband has just sealed the blast doors behind them and smashed the lock with a stab of pointed thought she can still taste in the fore-lobes of her brain. She is scared and she is frightened, because the man assigned to protect her seems to be angry and confused and isn't in control of himself let alone the situation. She is not Force-sensitive, but she doesn't need to be to know the walkways and gantries that cut across the diameters and chords of the shaft both above and below them will soon be swarming with droids.

All it takes is one blaster bolt. And they have thousands.

This is Padme Amidala with her back to the wall – but to look at her face, you would think she was standing on the floor of the senate watching one of her bills be taken to the vote.

o

o

This is the closest Usaki Ketsubo Daikatana has ever been to victory.

Certainly, she has won battles before. She has seduced men before. She has broken lives and careers and killed Mandalorians and rancor and even several Jedi and more than one Master. But this, this was very nearly her first and only real victory.

Because Obi-Wan _loves_. He understands something she now knows she never will. She was joined to him for a few precious moments; she felt the wellspring of calm certainty and compassion that flowed from him and which he let flow into him and from where he found the strength to meet her rage and anger and hatred and pain. All her tawdry tricks had battered against him and found a way into him and then she had realized there was no strength to what she did. The heart of her strength is darkness, and one lone candle is enough to hold that back.

Obi-Wan is more than a candle – Obi-Wan is a luminous being, a window onto a sunlight meadow of the Force.

He is beautiful, and there is nothing left in her to respond to that except as all the men who have called her beautiful have responded. And she knows that is hollow, and they don't really think she is _beautiful_. Not in the way she thinks Obi-Wan is beautiful. She cannot respond to his light with anything except darkness.

Her thighs wrapped around him, her hand in his hair, her lips inches from his, she responds with all she has.

Rage. Anger. Pain. Longing. The sucking embrace of Vaapad.

He has more than enough to give for both of them.

o

o

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

You are the chosen one, a prophecy given form, a boy without a father because the universe never gave you one and Darth Maul took him from you and the missions of the Council have separated you from him.

You have fought like a champion, like a hero from the legends of the Jedi, like the Hero With No Fear the HoloNet calls you. But you know the truth – you know the dead star-dragon that waits, coiled and cold as the frost on a mynock's mouth, in your heart. You know what the worm of fear that Yoda sensed in the Council Chamber has grown into.

Because you have fought like a champion, you have been blind to the fact that is all you have done. You have not planned, or even achieved. You have reacted, exactly as the controlling intelligence of your enemies wanted.

And now you find yourself in a place where you don't want to be – the place you really wished to avoid, but the place _you_ walked to willingly. You are with the woman you want to be with, but neither of you are where you want to be.

This is how it feels to Anakin Skywalker – right now, and maybe forever.

o

o

Obi-Wan realized he hadn't lost after Usaki did, and she didn't realize he didn't know it until it was too late for her to capitalize on the fact.

The two of them fought, legs tangled in each other and his robe and her skirt, the hurricane gales whipping around them. She moved with the fluid grace of her fighting style's namesake, lashing and diving and slipping past his blows and under his guard. Her flesh moved against his, rubbing and stroking, her hands on his chest and face, her embrace caressing him, even turning and sliding her shapely buttocks back up against him with a gasp of mocking delight.

She wasn't really fighting any more; she knew it was pointless. She was half-heartedly battling against him, just to keep him off-balance. She had battled against him and – even though she might be able to kill him – she hadn't won. Without realizing it, the potential of this victory had become so important to her she was left with nothing but her awful desire, the eroding hole punched through her into the cold, sucking, hungry void of interstellar space, as cold as the gaps between galaxies. Despite herself, despite the hatred she felt for herself, she was frantically still _trying_ – still trying what she knew had already failed. Still desperately wanting to be _wanted_.

Obi-Wan saw none of this – he was fighting for his life on top of a tiny platform with a terrible drop only a step away on all sides. Her blade and hands and scent were everywhere – inside his guard, inside his mind, inside _him_. She was ferocious and she was terrible and she was simply magnificent. He was concentrating so much on trying resist her he didn't notice he was managing. Chest to chest, their legs entangled, deep in each other's embrace their blades flashed like lightning amid the pounding steam and thundering winds.

Suddenly, swifter than a striking snake, she darted forward and kissed him on the mouth – open, warm, wet, tasting of woman and glitterstim. Her tongue invaded his mouth even as her mind slithered its way into his soul, a burst of Dark Side power careening through his defenses and fracturing his Jedi resolve. For an instant, he was naked and sweaty with her, tangled in silken sheets, above her and inside her, his hands crushing her fists into the bedclothes, his beard pressing into her sweat-beaded back, her shoulders moving impotently beneath him as she moaned and whimpered in ecstasy.

And then he took that single step and he fell.

Backwards, tumbling through the air for a hundred meters straight down. Had he tried to save himself, he would have bounced right into the cooling sink or off the spire-city, falling forever without a single hope of redemption.

But he did not try to save himself by reaching into the Force – he had already opened himself to the Force and the Force had already reached into _him_. He fell into the limpid waterfall of Soresu, falling through a suddenly calm eddy of the winds, letting the Force right him in the air so that instead of glancing off the spire and falling to his doom, he smashed heavily onto the narrow, slimy walkway.

There was no dream of spice-fueled ecstasy in Five Hundred Republica, no exotic perfumes and flickering candles, no fine wines from Corellia. Just cold, hard, algae- and slug-splattered tile, vermiform creatures writhing greasily around his form, and the cold hilt of a lightsaber in his hand.

That lightsaber was in the perpetual steam billows of the cooling sink, his hand uncomfortably warm and damp with the condensing steam, the 'saber blade flickering and risking shorting itself out in the wet atmosphere. Even as he made to pull it back towards his torso as he pulled himself to his feet and back into Soresu, Usaki was leaping down towards him, making a spear of her blade and a weapon of her body.

Obi-Wan reached into the depths of his vocabulary for one of the most offensive condemnations he owned. "You . . . _uncivilized_ harlot." Even as he said this, he deactivated his 'saber and rolled backwards, snapping himself to his feet as she landed in front of him, her own blade sinking into the ceramosteel where his head had been an instant before. Molten material bubbled like flowstone from the precise hole, even as she whipped her blade clear.

"Talking dirty, Obi-Wan?" she purred seductively, "You'd gotta know that I _love_ . . ."

And then the handful of algae and writhing-worms that Obi-Wan had clawed from the narrow walkway splattered into her beautiful face and she was gouging the muck from her eyes and he had the precious few instants needed to shake the water from his 'saber and reactivate it and slip back into his effortless Soresu.

" _Fighting_ dirty, on the other hand . . ." she snarled as she lunged for him. Her blade was a spinning bar of sunfire in an oblate sphere of red - two bars, three, five, nine. There was no restraint here – this was pure, unrestricted Vaapad, a hole punched through the universe into her rage and hatred and self-loathing that powered her attacks. Obi-Wan anchored his feet on the deck, thrusting the slime and slugs aside with a wave of Force telekinesis, anchoring him cat-footed to the edge of the cooling sink. He met every single one of her blows without so much as shifting his weight, his blade moving of its own accord in a perfect globe woven of arcing fans of blue-white afterimage.

She leapt over his head, narrowly risking having her spine burned through from her brainstem to kidneys by a slash from Obi-Wan's 'saber, and landed behind him. He turned and attacked her. She ducked underneath his blow, grabbing one of the guy-wires as she did so and swinging through a maneuver that could have been a dance-move from some down-level Coruscanti bar where credits were thrown on the table before nubile Twi'lek dancing girls.

And then her spiked heels crashed into his chest even as his blade sliced through the wire. He staggered and tumbled, only avoiding falling into the cooling sink with a desperate Force push that righted him and set him back on his feet. The wire parted with a singing scream and whipped through the air, Usaki clinging to it as it flipped her over the endless shaft of the cooling sink. At the apogee of her swing, she left go and Obi-Wan felt the surge in the Force as she cannonballed her way through the air, deploying her skirt and sleeves again with a shout of dark power as she hit a rising steam thermal, and leaped across the cooling sink to land, sure-footed and mocking, on the other side. She raised her 'saber at him in a salute that had a certain genuine quality to it.

Obi-Wan sighed – did this have to be so very _difficult?_

He closed his eyes, reached into the Force for the angles and distances, felt the eddies of the wind that would need to be taken into account – although not by his conscious mind. And then he flung his 'saber to the right while applying a Force push to the already-tottering radio antenna next to him.

With a series of musical snaps, the lightsaber cut through the guy lines in a precise, predetermined order, leaving only the ones that pulled the column towards the other side of the cooling sink. Obi-Wan jumped to the right and span a full turn counterclockwise, snatching the 'saber back into his left hand at the two-thirds point a split second after it had slashed through the base of the column.

The tower toppled under his feet even as he landed on it, swinging across the steam-gouting distance of the cooling sink. His right hand extended and a furrow of concentration on his well-manicured face, Obi-Wan Kenobi imparted _just_ enough lift to the swinging column so when it impacted on the opposite side of the cooling sink the edge of the tube wasn't _too_ far away to reach with a somersaulting leap.

Usaki barely had time to spring to the left so Obi-Wan's blade went though empty air and not the flat planes of her perfect stomach. As he spent a precious moment regaining his balance on the very tips of his toes on the very edge of the cooling sink, she smiled with a sense of hollow victory and reversed her grip on her lightsaber, making to reverse-stab him through the base of the spine and tear out his pelvis and crotch as she ripped it free.

And then Obi-Wan's right elbow crashed into the center of her back with bone-cracking force and she cried aloud in winded pain and tumbled forward, the tip of her blade a handsbreadth from his body and rapidly moving away as she fell into the cooling sink.

Half turning and looking over his left shoulder Obi-Wan rocked for a few moments, watching her fall and holding himself on the cusp of balance. And then he sighed, realized this wasn't over yet, and tossed his deactivated 'saber down the shaft.

Less than a shattered instant later, he let go of the edge of the cooling sink and threw himself after it, his right hand reaching for the hilt.

There was, after all, such as thing as _style._


	4. Revelations

**A/n :** The Shaak Ti elements in here are inspired by Vanguard Ziggy's "Tea for Two" which appears to be – sadly – on hiatus. Hiatus is not, unfortunately, a planet in the Outer Rim. It means that the story hasn't been added to for a long time. A great shame!

 **Part IV : Revelations**

Anakin's whole body was singing to the tune of his blue-hot blade as his lightsaber whirled in arcs of howling blue ozone, deflecting the hornet-swarm of blasterfire that was pounding towards him and Padme. The two of them had moved only meters from the now code-locked and probably ray-shielded blast door they had recently been forced through, standing on the beginning of the eight-hundred-meter gantry that bisected the cooling sink. Above and below them the walkways that lanced as chords and diameters across the circle of the massive steam chimney were festooned with droids – the Force did not tell him absolute numbers, but there were undoubtedly hundreds if not thousands of them. The ones below them had, in the main, their lines of fire partially blocked by the deckplates of the gantry – but those plates were diamond-pattern mesh and so, every so often, a blaster bolt would threaten to get through.

Blaster bolts travel at sub-luminal velocities, and so his defensive bladework was perhaps slightly more explicable than it seemed, but certainly no less impressive. He was impossibly deep into Shien by now, layers of conscious thought sloughing from him like the skin armor of a Balkorian gecko-turtle. The obfuscating cloud the remnants of his sentience created in the Force was being swept and dispersed by the surging currents of his Shien deflection parries. He jumped and leapt, somersaulting over Padme's head, vaulting over the railing to strike down blaster bolts before they impacted on the metal near her panic-gripping hands and flash burned her palm hotter than Tatooine sand. His arms were moving with Shien, his body with Ataru, his mind one with the Force. There was no real _volition_ in his movements, no real _purpose_ to what he was doing. He wasn't doing it _because_ it needed to be done. He wasn't doing it to defend Padme, or to destroy the droids, or to buy the two of them time.

He was doing it because it was being done.

A crystal clarity blossomed through his mind, or what could pass for his conscious mind in the middle of this Force-dream of perfect non-awareness. In this steam-gouting tube where the water vapor screamed past like the damned in a Corellian hell, he had found the centered rightness that had eluded him for so long. As he stood here and his desire to defend Padme was eclipsed by his orders to do just that, the Force fell into place around him and he fell into the Force. His blade moved precisely, almost of its own accord, as if the being _Anakin Skywalker_ were merely an accident of the Force.

Which, if the truth were told, could very well be true.

There was a selfless precision to his movements, a selflessness that was more than mere altruism and went well into the denial of selfhood itself. It was not Anakin Skywalker who defended Padme, it was not the Jedi Order, or even the Republic. She was, quite simply, protected by the Force.

But even that was not the whole truth – for the Force itself did not care who lived or died, the Force did not act, the Force did not have volition.

The Force simply _was_.

And so – without fear, without anger, without desire, passion or regret – Anakin Skywalker made war.

o

o

Obi-Wan Kenobi fell straight down through the cooling sink, his body describing the laser-straight line the Force told him existed through the gantries and walkways, not to mention the blaze of blasterfire – both direct and deflected.

Of course, even a laser could be twisted from a perfectly straight path by gravimetric forces and within a bent universe there was no such thing as a straight line. Obi-Wan's body weaved subtly from side to side, riding the currents and eddies of the Force in a dropping free-fall as blaster bolts, superheated steam and hard metal railings whipped past fast enough to kill. His hand reaching for his lightsaber, it turned over in the air, tumbling as it fell, showing all its sides and facets to the Jedi Master for his consideration. _It seems,_ he mused to himself, _that the emitter crystal housing needs attention._

The distance between his hand and the hilt of the 'saber had been gradually decreasing, until the metal found his hand and his thumb found the activation stud and the weapon fountained into a coherent bar of blue-white plasma that met two blaster bolts and swatted them away. Obi-Wan tucked his body into a roll, moving the 'saber with just his wrist to bat away three other blaster bolts, even as he allowed his body to fall past it, falling through the hole that Anakin had opened for his friend in his Shien defense and plugging it for him.

And then his bent shoulders touched the deck-plates of the gantry and his blade shrank away and Anakin closed the gap above his head and he was rolling and tumbling to take the stinging speed from his fall, too fast for anything but stray shots to hit him and too lucky for anything except targeted ones. He rolled back to his feet, his blade extending with a snap-hum into the thick air, and leapt towards Anakin.

Just for a second, as short as the moment between life and death, there was an instant of dreadful foreboding, of hideous knowledge there might be very few more moments like this because there was one just like it approaching with the solid inexorability of a sandcrawler wreck.

And then the moment was past as Anakin whirled over the head of the Senator to stand on the other side of her and Obi-Wan's boots landed in the Force-echoes of Anakin's and the two of them were exchanging the grins that had grown into reflections of each other over the last twelve years. "Nice of you to drop in, Master," said Anakin's mouth dryly, even as Obi-Wan smiled as he saw the light of absorbed detachment in his former student's eyes which he had tried to show him for years.

"Oh, you know," Obi-Wan said self-deprecatingly as water cascaded from his hair, "you're always telling me I should spend some time in a steam-room."

o

o

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker.

Despite their differences – in age, in lightsaber combat Form, in philosophical outlook, in simple attitude to problem-solving – this is what they are. Brothers in arms, comrades, best friends, two halves of a single warrior. A union of two people that transcends the word _team_ or _partnership_ the way Jedi combat transcends a youngling scuffle. The war has made them this – the war has made Jedi something they were never intended to be, and it has made Obi-Wan and Anakin brothers.

Like this, together, there is nothing in the universe that can stand against them. There is not even the possibility of danger for the Senator, and she knows it. She stands between the calm transparisteel of Obi-Wan Kenobi's Soresu and the roiling thunderhead of Anakin's Shien and she knows that she is safe. And that flows from her and bathes the two of them.

And it flows over Obi-Wan Kenobi and laves him of any lingering doubts of worry, of care, of uncertainly. And it flows into Anakin and assures him of her love and pride in what he is doing.

The danger is there.

But this is what it is to be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker.

For now.

o

o

Usaki crouched as she fell cat-footed to the gantry, reaching into the Force to stabilize herself and ease the crackling pain in her spine and elsewhere. She purred like a Haruun Kal vinecat as she stood, stretching her long limbs and rolling the curve of her neck sensuously. Her 'saber was clipped to the inside of her skirt, resting along the muscle of her thigh, a steam-heated shaft of metal hot against the leather-embrace wrapping her skin. She placed her hands on the railing of the gantry, looking down into the billowing clouds of steam that rose from the inlet manifolds far below, rising and condensing in a perpetual rain, her eyes focusing on the underlit section of cloud that flashed with 'saber-fan lightning.

She flicked her already-soaking hair off her face with a wave of the Force and reached towards a droid commander three walkway levels below. The war machine rose off its lower appendages as if picked up by a scrapping magnet and – before it could realize what was happening – it was being taken apart in midair as if by invisible hands. As parts came off they were just left to casually drop through the steam-cloud banks into the echoing depths of the cooling sink. The droid's com unit floated up to Usaki, condensation dripping from it, and fitted itself into place around her ear.

"This is Count Dooku's emissary," she purred into the mouthpiece. "Shut down the steam inlet manifolds to Cooling Sink Alpha and send all available droid units here." There was a pause, and then she smiled a deathly smile into the microphone. "The Jedi won't be a problem for very much longer."

o

o

Obi-Wan and Anakin were still moving with preternatural speed, deflecting the bolts that burst out of the column of cloud that surrounded them, from droids that were sometimes invisible and sometimes not, when those clouds began to thin and disperse. The howling gale of the pumping steam shut off and the cloying wetness in the air began to vanish. The water still dripped from the gantries above and the humidity was still all-but-unbearable, but there was no doubt at all that something had shut off the steam inlet valves far below them.

The air was clearing – it was getting easier to breathe and far easier to accurately deflect bolts back at the droids that were standing above them, previously partially-hidden by the steam. Water streaming from his hair and dripping from his robes, Anakin snarled in triumph and flicked a trio of bolts one hundred meters to strike down three droids. "I have a good feeling about this, Master!" he yelled.

Obi-Wan looked up, the Force drawing his gaze to the tall figure standing on a gantry several hundred meters above him. Impossibly and impudently, she blew him an extravagant kiss – and then spread her hands as if unrolling a gigantic flimsi map.

"Oh, not good," said Obi-Wan as he felt the chaos of the billowing steam have an unnatural order imposed on it from the inner chaos of the Dark Jedi. The clouds parted – not completely, not totally, but entirely enough. The clouds parted, revealing what looked like an entire legion of battle-droids taking position on the gantries and walkways above.

Obi-Wan could practically hear Anakin grinding his teeth. "I know, Master," he snarled, "I still have much to learn." Watching the Dark Jedi above them, Obi-Wan could not even find the strength to answer.

Usaki raised one arm and swept it forward – Obi-Wan could feel the imperative in the Force accompanying the gesture – and then the very air tasted of ionization.

o

o

Blasters are not lasers; the bolt which they produce is made of high-energy particles excited to a highly unstable plasma. The visible light is the product of the excessive compaction the particles undergo prior to discharge; the energy begins to degrade and transform even before the bolt has left the muzzle of the weapon, bleeding out into a range of EM radiation, some of which belongs in the visible spectrum. Galvening applied to the blaster bolt preserves the shot's integrity over longer distances, but even so the high-energy ionized gas tends to "leak" as the galvening fades and degrades over distance. Eventually, a blaster bolt will fade to nothingness in the air – but prior to that it fills the atmosphere with charged ions which cling to objects given half a chance and turn them into impromptu magnets.

Jedi are well-used to ionization; the sharp, artificial, metallic taste across the plain of the tongue as if the mouth were full of primitive copper creditchips from some backward Outer Rim world. Lightsabers themselves are bars of arc-wave plasma, belching billowing clouds of ions and ozone into the air around them. Jedi are well-used to the crawling tension across the skin, of hair growing lighter with static charge, of the crackling discharge as voltage differentials equalize.

It is not for nothing several of the seven forms of lightsaber combat describe themselves using terms which refer to the practitioner's relative position to the storm.

But what was happening to Obi-Wan and Anakin was entirely out of their experience, simply on a matter of scale. The massive open space of the cooling sink and the multiple levels placed them at the seeming center-point of a dome of blasters, blasters that were all spitting galvened plasma death at them, each bolt potent enough to boil flesh and char bone fatally. The rain of blaster fire was so thick bolts were careening and carooming off each other, their trajectories ruined as they interfered with each other.

Wasteful. Mass-produced. Uncivilized. So many ways not the way a Jedi made war.

So many ways the way that war was made.

o

o

Obi-Wan was deep into Soresu once again – standing calm amid the eye of the storm, allowing the rage of the battle to howl around him and Padme like the hyperwinds exterior to the city-spire, like Usaki's Vaapad. His blade was a series of narrow fans of blue-white plasma, never truly fast but just fast enough, not truly deflecting bolts but rather simply spoiling their trajectories, interfering with only the ones that would strike him or Padme. Reaching into the Force to sense her intentions, her flinches from the bursts of ionized sparks from the durasteel gantries, her panicked, unconscious shying away from the blaster fire, he only bothered with those bolts that would land where she was standing when they hit, not those which which would land where she was standing when they were fired. He concerned himself solely with the blaster fire that fell within the hemisphere with Padme at its center – allowing for oscillation back and forth like a moon's libration – leaving the other half of the equation to Anakin.

On the other side of the imaginary lunar sphere, Anakin's movements were less measured, more violent, less precise, more energetic. Blaster fire splattered from the sheets of plasma, a flickering hemisphere of blue-white energy simply nothing could get through. He flung bolts far and wide, deflecting those that were never a threat, unwilling to take any risk the calm acceptance of the Force might bring. Anakin had hit his stride now, pitch-perfect Shien, a flawless sonata of Gamorrean opera for bandfil and gasan string drum. Droids were falling from the gantries like wirethread caterpillars during monsoon season on the jungle moon of Va'art; curled up and dropping amid the raindrops and horribly humid air, destroyed by their own blaster fire. With a snarl, Anakin tightened his fist and swept a pair of droids that would have fallen onto their shoulders spinning into the wall. They burst apart in a shower of sparks against the wall fifty meters away, durasteel splitting with a shriek.

"This is just target practice, Master!" Anakin yelled. There wasn't even a suggestion of humor in his voice; despite the fact this weight of blaster fire was not beyond his capabilities, his grim determination to enforce his will on that of the Force prevented any sense of levity. Obi-Wan smiled.

"And we don't need the practice?" he murmured. It was not truly him deflecting the blaster bolts, it was simply the Force. The ripple in that ever-moving ocean which was Obi-Wan Kenobi flowed into it and back out without so much as disturbing its eddies. Submerged in Soresu now, he was beyond even the awareness jealousy could be a response to the fact Anakin was deflecting more blaster fire than he was and with a greater degree of deadly accuracy. But, with his Force-awareness interfaced with nothing more than _what-is-happening-now_ , he could not see the dangerous dark clouds on the horizon of his former-Padawan's Force-landscape. Roiling with lightning, they boiled ever closer, even as the number of droids and the weight of blaster fire dropped imperceptibly in a way the Force could perceive.

"Not for us!" snapped Anakin. "For them! We're not getting anywhere!"

"You had somewhere to be?" remarked Obi-Wan casually. He sighed – his former-apprentice still had much to learn about _patience_. They were in tolerable danger here and all choices at this point would place them in a worse position. _Patience_ would see them through this. Wait for the Force to provide a path.

And if no path was provided, that was no reason to step off into the Ja'atharli tangleweed.

"For Force's sake, Master!" Anakin swore, something which would have drawn a mild rebuke from Obi-Wan, but that response was eclipsed by the shocking sensation of the Force gathering itself at his back and suddenly vanishing in a burst of Ataru speed. "Usaki will escape!"

Obi-Wan could not fault Anakin's logic; Usaki was no match for Obi-Wan – not now, not now he had her measure. She might have beat him when she was sixteen and he was a callow Padawan, but as a Master she certainly wasn't his match. She had ordered the heavy-handed droid attack to provide her with cover – she was not interested in defeating them. Her Master had not known there were Jedi on Kyunden; whatever her mission was on this world it did not include assassination of Jedi or Senators. She would flee – as she always _had_. Either from herself or from the Jedi.

But Obi-Wan could certainly fault Anakin's _execution_ – his Padawan spun his 'saber out of Shien and into Djem So, sprinting down the gantry faster than a stranglesnake towards a group of super battle droids, slamming bolts back into their blaster-reflective chrome armor. It was obvious what he wanted to do – cut his way through them and capture or kill Usaki.

Suddenly, Obi-Wan was trying to protect Senator Amidala from the hail of blaster fire alone. A double target, but only with a single blade.

 _Oh, Sithspit,_ he thought, _I have a_ very _bad feeling about this._

o

o

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi's masterpiece.

The Jedi say he is the only living Master of Soresu, but that is merely a _label_. It does not encompass, or even seek to encompass, the truth of what that means. He is a supreme negotiator, known – perhaps derisively – as _Kenobi the Negotiator_. But these two things, these achievements – as great as they are – are merely pale reflections, a map which is not the territory.

To call someone a Master of one of the Seven Forms of lightsaber combat is merely to describe a level of expertise in it; Anakin is a Master of Djem So, Kit Fisto is a Master of Shii Cho. But to use the word with its fullest meaning transcends such merely mechanistic descriptions – a Master has _mastered_ not only the Form, but also himself. A _true_ Master does not use the Form, nor does he let it use him. A true Master exists within the paths and the choices that the Form presents to him. Shaak Ti is a true Master of Makashi, Mace Windu is a true Master of Vaapad.

And Obi-Wan Kenobi is _the_ Master of Soresu.

The HoloNet speaks of his victories on Cato Neimoidia, Ord Cestus and elsewhere – even his lieutenant has become so famous there are youngling fights over who will get to "be" Commander Cody – and of him being the only Jedi – and certainly the only _Padawan_ \- to defeat a Sith in one thousand years. His negotiations are textdoc examples studied by the staff of Senators and prospective Jedi Consulars. But those victories are simply a matter of angles and precision and training and superior reflexes and trust in the Force.

But this, this is his masterpiece.

He stands beside a woman whom he is not here to defend and whose protector has abandoned her and his Council-given orders, seeking the hollow 'Net accolades for his own mission. The weight of blaster fire is so great that to blink is to make pale nebulae of stars burst and explode in painted-afterimage on his eyelids. The target of his own mission is escaping, a successful resolution evading him with every passing moment. Padme is simply not equipped to deflect blaster bolts. She has no lightsaber, no Force awareness, no training.

She is utterly reliant on him.

And Obi-Wan Kenobi opens himself to the Force and sees the paths his skills and training and Mastery – of Soresu, of negotiation, of _himself_ and others – lay before him.

And he reaches out and takes one of them, the one the Force tells him leads to victory.

o

o

Anakin sliced through the droids in a matter of instants, scattering their scrapped parts with a shout of the Force. He turned, smashing aside a few stray bolts of blaster fire, leaping onto a toppling super battle droid, kicking off it with an extravagant Force-push, cannonballing through the air towards a gantry above him, rolling through the dissipating steam clouds, condensation spraying from his spinning form.

He was headed upwards, for Usaki. The intention was clear in his mind – capture or kill her. Crush the head of his enemies and the body would fall apart.

Below him, Obi-Wan sighed – Anakin always wanted to win the war with a single battle, win a battle with a single stroke. But he could not afford to dwell on his former-Padawan's weaknesses – even those that were his fault. Regret and guilt were a form of attachment, and he had long ago learned to let that drift out of his life.

Right here and now, he needed to be concerned with the here and now.

Obi-Wan turned to Senator Amidala, locking eyes with her even as she flinched and his lightsaber swirled in brilliant arcs. More than one bolt had struck him, blocking fire with his body as well as his blade. His powers of energy dissipation – a trick that Shaak Ti had taught him – were not great enough to provide him with protection for very long. The wounds were stinging and burning, the only reason his robes weren't aflame the humidity in the air. He needed a second bladesbeing.

"Padme." He surprised her, using her first name, the two of them standing toe to toe, as close as he and Usaki had been less than a minute before. "Padme, I need you to open yourself up to me." She looked at him uncomprehendingly. His 'saber flashed between them, him spinning around and pushing her roughly down, blaster fire sparking off the wet lattice-work of the gantry. Then they were eye to eye again, his face stroboscopically lit by his whirling lightsaber. "You have to trust me, Padme – open yourself to me."

His blade was out to his right, deflecting blaster fire, and there was no way he could bring to to bear against the bolt that was about to crash into Padme's shoulder. There was no safe space to push her into – every single square centimeter of air was hostile with plasma – and so all he could do was raise his left hand and block the chunk of coruscating ionization, reaching deep into the Force to absorb and deflect the energy, to spread it throughout his body so it didn't blow his hand off and crash into the back of the Senator's head anyway.

A cry of pain was torn from his lips as the bolt burned its way bone-deep into his hand, charing tendons and veins, boiling blood and re-wiring nerves and synapses to do nothing but scream agony into his mind. Even as he felt his knees buckle with the pain he reached into the Force and the lessons Shaak Ti had imparted to him in those uncomfortable hours in the Temple playrooms with a training 'saber. _Pain is in your_ mind _, Knight Kenobi! A sentient can override any nerve in his body!_

Padme's hand was on him even as he flexed his hand and felt his tendons answer – and the sickening crack inside one of his metacarpals that showed his bones had been charred to dangerously fragile. His Soresu still deflecting blaster bolts, he pushed the Force into his wounded hand, shoving out the pain and damage, strengthening broken bones and making it a serviceable limb again with the simple awareness that he did not matter, only the Force mattered. A wave of compassion flowed out of Padme; worry, concern, love, grief over his bravery. A flood of emotions pouring from her, sluice gates opening out of simple compassion.

Obi-Wan was inside her through that chink in her armor in an instant, and then he was surrounded by her panic as she felt him inside her, scrabbling to close the gates and push him out of her. Her privacy was invaded by the Jedi Master, his thoughts inside hers, alien flavors and considerations, an impossible calm pouring into her frenetic whirlpool and the thousand lies and half-truths that were her stock in trade.

 _Padme,_ Obi-Wan's voice said with calm urgency in her mind, even as he reached out through the Force towards the 'saber that Anakin held tightly in his artificial hand, _don't fight_ against _me, fight_ with _me. I need you._

Her response was a frantic and ineffectual scrabbling and pushing away, as impassioned and useless as if he had been physically assaulting her. _Padme,_ his mind said inside hers, _please. I'm your friend. I need your help_. She did not listen to him, trying to push him out of her. And then she stopped.

She realized – although he had not said it, and would never say it, that he did not need her permission or her co-operation. The connection they shared – as friends, a connection which had been forged nearly three years before when Obi-Wan had tended to her wounds after the Genosian arena – had allowed him into her mind. She trusted him, and that had been her undoing. He could take control of her if he wanted.

But that would be a struggle, she realized. He needed her co-operation to make things _easier_ for him.

She had absolutely no idea what he was about to do, what he was about to try. But, as she lowered her defenses and simply sank her will into his, she realized trusted him. Implicitly. Perhaps the only person in the galaxy she really _did_ trust.

It was a shock when she realized she had not even considered Anakin in that light, certainly not of the same order or mode of trust as Obi-Wan.

Through the connection that Obi-Wan shared with Anakin, the Jedi Master reached to his former-Padawan, latching onto the spinning Knight in mid-air, even as he landed on another gantry, 'saber-slicing another droid to fragments and making to leap again. And in that instant, while he was distracted with his balance and his position and his target – Usaki herself – above him, Obi-Wan reached through the Force and reversed the polarity of the electrodrivers in Anakin's mechanical hand.

Durasteel fingers sprang open even as Anakin sprang upwards and the lightsaber tumbled free.

The Force sang out and the hilt, the still-activated blade trailing behind it like a comet's tail, accelerated like a missile burning the last of its fuel, flying not quite straight down. Blaster bolts struck the blade, ricocheting off the bar of plasma, the trajectories which would have killed or wounded Obi-Wan or Padme spoiled. The 'saber itself jerked in the air, caroming off blaster fire to smack, with unerring accuracy, into Padme's hand. Obi-Wan tightened her grip on the hilt of her husband's weapon even as she realized what it was he was trying to do.

"Oh, no . . ." she began to say, but it was simply too late – the 'saber angled seemingly of its own volition and batted away two blaster bolts, the shock that transmitted up her arm moving into her spine and then her legs, causing her to spring upwards as plasma fire exploded where she had been standing an instant before. She flipped in the air, blaster fire passing a hand's breath from her even as she felt herself flick bolts of plasma away from her and Obi-Wan.

o

o

Anakin's reaction to the loss of his 'saber was casual – he had fought, and won, so many battles without it he did not react with the dismay other Jedi might have done. He thought a stray bolt might have struck his hand, de-polarizing the electrodrivers and causing his weapon to tumble free, but now that he and the weapon were tumbling in opposite directions he did not waste time worrying about it. He concentrated on finding the safest route through the hail of blaster fire, not wishing to be shot from the sky. He knew he could take a blaster shot or two, but they would doubtless knock him off course and he wanted to be able to land precisely where he intended.

About three meters in front of Usaki.

She turned with the speed of a striking venom-wyrm, her 'saber lit and in her hand, haloed by steam and the whirling Force-gale that seemed to surround her, her hair and the skirts of her dress billowing in an immaterial wind. "So," she purred, "the famous little Anakin Skywalker thinks he can make his name by capturing me." She dropped into a perfect Shien ready stance, flaunting her figure and lashing at Anakin's psyche with invasive Force-tendrils. "You think you're man enough to do it, boy?"

Anakin snarled with anger and leapt for her. "You've killed enough people, Usaki!" he yelled, his hands reaching for her weapon arm. She jumped backwards, shocked perhaps by the rage of his attack, and angled her weapon down, forcing him to roll beneath the sweep of the blade. She jumped over him, somersaulting through the air to stand behind him, lashing out with a swift 'saber strike as she did so.

But Anakin was ready for that and flipped over onto his back, kicking out at her arm as he did so and driving her blade sideways. The lightsaber cut through the base of one of the support struts for the railing edging the gantry and then, as she pulled the blade back for the killing blow, severed it at the top. Anakin reached, the Force reached through him, and a meter of durasteel span into his hand even as he leapt back to his feet.

The bar of metal was heavy – heavier by far than a lightsaber – but Anakin didn't care. He infused the rod with the Force, lightening it, giving it the effective weight and balance of the weapon that had fallen into the steam clouds below. He did not reach into the Force to find where that weapon was, knowing this fight would demand all his concentration.

He thrust towards Usaki, wanting to skewer her on the length of durasteel. But she was ready for such a move and simply stepped backwards, spinning her 'saber and making to shorten his weapon by half-a-meter. Anakin swept the rod down, spinning it under the tip of her blade, and cracking her on the shoulder. She stumbled to the side, gripping onto the railing as Anakin thrust with a powerful Force push against her, trying to shove her over the edge and into the depths of the cooling sink. His concentration was broken as she came at him with a shout of the Force, her blade angling for his neck. He was forced to give ground as she opened herself up to Vaapad, her blade a smear of bloodshine against the billowing gray of the clouds. She was attacking so fast that he had to spend all his time dodging the blows – he could not hope to parry a lightsaber with his improvised weapon. She was not really attacking him, rather just wildly slashing at him to drive him back and keep him off balance, preventing him from hitting her, the frantic blows of a woman who knows that she is outclassed and is desperately wanting to win before the rules are changed.

One good blow with the length of durasteel – with Anakin's artificial sinews and muscles, not to mention his incomparable Force-power, behind it - would crack her skull or shatter her spine. Just one blow was all he needed – he had the reach, the skill and the power; he merely needed to be _patient_ in order to get the opening.

It was only when Usaki's blade slashed, impossibly fast, down the _length_ of his crude club – a precision he would have thought impossible for someone as enraged as she seemed – that he realized what he had read in her eyes had been nothing more than a reflection of his own wants and desires.

He futilely hurled the one and a half decimeters of durasteel rod at her head, guiding it with the Force. She slashed it into vapor with a flourish and swung at him. He tumbled to the ground, landing on his back, his hand millimeters from being severed where her 'saber had slashed through the railing. She drew back her blade, readying her whole being for the Shiak that would kill him.

Anakin suddenly began to have a very _bad feeling about this_.

o

o

For a few, precious seconds, Padme Amidala understood what it was to be a Jedi.

Or perhaps did not understand what it was to _be_ a Jedi, but certainly took a few steps into a larger world. Obi-Wan had opened himself to her, his mind and soul flowing through hers without let or hindrance, swirling around the topography of her psyche as much as she let them. She felt a strange sensation infuse her limbs and body, a volition that was not hers – but was not entirely Obi-Wan's either.

She had thought – when the 'saber had smacked into her palm and her fingers had curled around her husband's weapon in an intimate union that she thought she could never share with a Jedi – that she would be nothing more than a flesh-puppet; her mind as divorced from what her body was doing as the brain of an enlightened B'omarr monk. But that wasn't the case – she had not been _used_ by Obi-Wan, because such a concept was entirely outside his character. Instead, Obi-Wan had used their link to open her up to the endless vistas of the Force.

She felt it flow through him into her, pouring from a place she did not know and could not name. She was intellectually aware of the fact that what Obi-Wan was showing to her was called _Soresu_ – but to give it a name was not to give it a meaning. She had the sensation of being in the eye of a storm, of being surrounded on all sides by screaming, random, hideous chaos. She had thought, earlier in the battle, when she could do nothing but cower or perhaps shoot back with the occasional futile bolt of blaster fire, the whole universe was out to to kill her. And it would have taken a great deal to disabuse her of that notion.

The vista of the Force that Obi-Wan had showed to her was infinite – it had washed that notion away in an instant.

The universe was not out to kill her, the universe did not care about her. She was a very small capacitor in the universe, certainly at the _center_ of her personal universe, but always a very small capacitor. But she was inside the eye of the storm of that universe, with all the hatred and all the anger and all the danger whirling around her.

 _Focus on the here and now, Padawan,_ said Obi-Wan's voice in her mind. _Until it reaches the walls of the eye, the storm is of no concern. The storm will blow because that is what storms do. And the eye will remain calm because that is what eyes do. Remain within the eye and the storm will never reach you._

And that was what Obi-Wan had wanted when he asked her to open up to him; he did not need to be able to _control_ her – he could have flung her around with his Force powers like a playful akk dog. He could have very probably fought telekinetically with the two 'sabers, something which the Force flowing through her called Jar'Kai. What he wanted was her conscious assistance in fighting the battle.

Obi-Wan opened himself to the Force and opened himself to her – totally and utterly, without embarrassment or shame or reserve. She saw all his achievements and failures, all his loves and hopes. She saw the love her felt for Anakin, the pride and regret at his achievements. She saw his love for Qui-Gon and for Siri, and felt the tender pain of grief that was their deaths. She felt the devotion to the Council, his duty to the Republic, the complex web of friendships that surrounded him. Kit Fisto and their military friendship, Shaak Ti and his deep, abiding love and admiration for her, the mutual respect between him and Mace Windu.

She felt it all, and she saw Soresu spread out before her – a thousand and one choices, pathways she could take at that instant, arranged for her selection like differing voting options spread on her desk by Jar-Jar. And Obi-Wan's Force presence illumed her mind and she knew which one she _should_ choose, no matter what the risk, no matter what the cost.

Because he found she didn't care about the risk. She didn't care about the cost. And not in any selfish way, but rather because she was totally selfless now. Obi-Wan's openness flowed into her and humbled her and made her see just how small and petty any _desire_ really was. Planets fell, wars were lost, stars burned cold – but the Force endured forever.

As she made her choices, she found herself obeying them, her muscles tightening according to her own will – for she did not really _tell_ her muscles to tighten and relax even when she was in total control of her own body. Her mind made a decision and her body acted on it; was this so very different now? The complexities of something as simple was walking would overwhelm her conscious mind – she, and all sentients, had unconscious portions of their minds that translated desire into volition.

And now that portion of her mind was informed by the Force flowing from Obi-Wan Kenobi, making her legs tighten and fling her into the air, the Force wrapping around her and lifting her, spinning her, her arms moving to angle her husband's blade to deflect blot after bolt after bolt. The force of the blows compressed her shoulders, compacting her lungs. The shock of her landing drove her diaphragm up – but her breathing was timed with this. And with the stretches that twisted her body in the air. She was not really _breathing_ – air was coming into and going out of her lungs with a smooth, uninterrupted rhythm, driven by the breakneck tempo of the combat. It was one thing which she would have had to worry about but which the Force simply took care of for her.

The implications humbled her – was this how Jedi _breathed_? In total union with everything they did, as a function of that, in absolute harmony. Fed by the connection to the Living Force, she knew that was true – and that this ability to breath in harmony was central to a Jedi's very nature. She wondered if any Jedi could survive with his connection to the Force intact if he could no longer breathe with such total harmony.

She was bouncing and jumping like a bat-hawk, vaulting and leaping over Obi-Wan, back-to-back with him and head-to-heels, then right way up again, the 'saber flashing in her hand. She was moving partly under her own power, but far more under the guidance of the waves of Force that were flowing through her connection with Obi-Wan. It lifted her into the air, righting her, balancing her, changing her angle and trajectory in just the ways she had seen when the pathways of Soresu were laid before her and she chose.

It did not feel like it did when she was flung about in a starship under attack from turbolasers, or even when Anakin lifted her in his arms and spun her around. There, she was not in control of what was happening, and she could feel the portions of her that were being pushed and pulled, the rest of her following in a sometimes unwilling chain. Here, she felt as if she were riding on the back of a speeder bike with Obi-Wan over terrain she knew intimately; knowing when to lean into the curves, knowing when to pull back, knowing what would help him and doing it. It felt as if every single element of her – from her bones and muscles to the last follicle of her hair – was lifted at just the same time and with precisely the same amount of energy. When she flipped and bent and twisted in the air, it was her own muscles bending and spinning her, and also the Force lifting and moving her into that position.

It was their connection which made that possible, but it was perhaps the case her reactions lacked the precision and swiftness that they could have possessed. The choices that she made from the thousands that Soresu and Obi-Wan presented to her might not have been as selfless she they could have been.

Because she had not fully opened herself to him.

She couldn't – he had opened himself to her and she had seen everything, every single desire and memory and piece of knowledge that he possessed. His love for Siri, his deep friendship with Shaak Ti that he could never admit was anything more, even his tormented physical desire for Usaki – all of these were presented to her.

She could never afford to respond in kind – there were secrets that she held that _were not her own_. She wasn't a Jedi, she was not _supposed_ to deny all attachment. Her husband _was_ – and he _hadn't_. She could not allow him to see _that_ – it would ruin _everything_ that her husband and her had struggled and hidden and lied to preserve.

And so in the heart of Padme there was a locked box, a ray-shielded room that Obi-Wan could not see into and against which the ocean of his honesty lapped in endless waves. She was deliberately shutting him out of part of herself, wanting to keep her secrets.

Out of respect for her, and an awareness that when a politician opened up as much as she was able it would never be completely, he did not sift through the rest of her to discover what _sort_ of secrets might lie inside that strongbox. He simply poured his own openness and honesty into her, filling her with his own awareness of the Force and Soresu, allowing her to help keep them in the eye of the storm.

But while not all of her secrets were her own, neither was she aware of all of them. As the two of them whipped and flipped, springing off the latticework gantry deck plates and bouncing from the blaster-chopped rails, the Living Force sang to him from within Padme. There was _life_ there – not merely Padme herself, but two tight knots of potential and brilliant nodes of the Living Force. If there were colors that could be expressed in Basic within the vision granted by Force-perception, there would be two bright stars of verdant green nestling in her abdomen.

Two little clusters of cells; tiny and innocent and perhaps so small and new that even a medi-scan would miss them. But Obi-Wan's Force-perception could not miss them – they were _alive_ and distinct from her. They were _children_ – little tiny distinct blobs of life that were not even younglings yet, so new the rest of Padme's body had not even noticed they were there.

Padme was _pregnant_.

That knowledge impacted Obi-Wan on a level far deeper than the merely intellectual; there was no real sense of wonder or amazement, for he was a Jedi and not only unprepared for the emotional impact of new life, but also completely lacking the docking ports to appreciate it. The impact was crushing because he knew Anakin loved Padme, loved her with a passion which was dangerous in the Jedi, a passion that was all-but-forbidden and which – out of his _own_ love for Anakin – he had not questioned and not challenged.

And now Padme was pregnant – she was pregnant with twins. There was someone in her life she loved enough to be intimate with – for he knew her well enough to know that she was as far from the hollow desires of Usaki as the Outer Rim was from the Core. She _loved_ someone enough to do that. Not merely a desire for physical pleasure, of relief or release, but real, genuine love.

What would that knowledge _do_ to Anakin?

Even as he continued to pour himself into Padme and allow both of them to pour into Soresu, he reached through the Force and touched the two little bundles of life, letting the currents of the Force show him where their potential might lead.

An awareness sliced through his head; his former-Padawan, lying on his back on a gantry, the railing sliced through by a wild 'saber blow, unarmed and at the mercy of an enemy who was holding a coruscating bar of plasma.

He realized with a shock this was not a _portent_ but a warning; not the potential of the twins but rather the current state of affairs.

Time to end this.

With barely an effort, he pushed aside the twinge of misgiving that what he felt _might_ have been a portent, and pulled himself out of Padme. She shrieked with the shock of loneliness and terror as she felt her arm snap upwards and Anakin's lightsaber went flying out of her hand, vanishing into the steam clouds above them. And then Obi-Wan's blade described a neat circle around the two of them and a perfect disk of latticed deckplate dropped out from the gantry, taking the Jedi Master and the Senator with it.

The blaster fire from the droids streamed over their heads and through the space they had occupied only moments before. Padme screamed as they dropped in glorious free-fall. Obi-Wan's injured hand extended and with his 'saber moving casually to deflect stray blaster fire, he called upon the Force to glide the disk through the maze of gantries and deep into the lowest levels of the cooling sink, below the level of the massive steam inlet valves. Like a skimming stone over a tranquil lake back on Naboo, the disk skipped over the water one, twice, three times, four and then came to rest against an island of rusted machinery that was jutting out of the warm condensation lake. Streamlined shapes moved in the water below them, piscine alien creatures that had made the perpetual lake their home. The disk wallowed in the water, supported by Obi-Wan's command of the Force, even as he helped her onto the rugged island. She clung to the rough red surface of pitted durasteel, trying not to slip on the algae that clung to it.

"Stay here, all of you," Obi-Wan said crisply, re-igniting his lightsaber and crouching, ready to spring. And then he jumped, reaching into the Force to carry himself to the gantries high above which he could not see.

"I'm not a committee!" Padme yelled after his vanishing form. But it was unlikely he could hear her, for the Jedi Master was already several levels up, vanishing into the steam.


	5. Endgame

**A/n :** Shout outs to Almyra for her excellent _Star Wars_ knowledge – check out her story which is referenced in this chapter (I'll let you find out which one!) Additionally, shout out to Tierney Beckett and her great story "Storm Clouds May Gather" which really gave me some insight into Obi-Wan  & romance. Check out those stories! (available on this website)

 **Part V : Endgame**

Anakin felt his 'saber arcing its way towards him through the Force. He jerked his hand off the railing and reached below the level of the gantry, hauling on the speeding weapon with his formidable Force powers, accelerating its already headlong rush towards him.

As his lightsaber screamed towards him with the desperate urgency of Padme, Usaki angled her own weapon and made to lunge into his heart. "I guess this is where you lose the game, little Skywalker," she snarled. He could sense the sensual tightening of her muscles sequentially as she primed her perfect body for the blow, an exquisite Shiak in the making.

With an ugly and barely-muffled clang as durasteel hilt met armored glove, Anakin's blade smacked into his artificial hand with enough force to break the leather. "No," he said quietly, cold rage building in the center of his being as he looked at this Dark Side _disease._ "This is where the rules _change_."

His blade swept through the air, deflecting her lunge past his shoulder even as he sliced through the railing with an explosion of molten durasteel. He had hoped she would be thrown off-balance by her thrust, but she was too experienced a warrior for that. She made to whip her weapon back, getting a good, solid two-handed grip on the hilt and making to whirl the blade into his neck.

With a bellow of the Force and a flex of his powerful muscles, Anakin leapt into the air, pivoting on his left hand, throwing his body clean off the latticework metal of the gantry, lashing out with a blow from his right leg, as sudden and devastating as a hydraulic piston. His boot crashed into her throat, something in there yielding under the force of the blow. As she staggered back, a terrible paroxysm of coughing starting in her impressive chest, Anakin called on the Force again to sweep him still higher into the air, spinning around and lashing out with a left-footed kick. It hit her at the point of her chin, her head snapping backwards and rolling to the side, her shoulders following it and the rest of her trailing in an undignified chain.

She stumbled backwards, her green eyes glazing, blood bubbling at the corners of her mouth and trickling from her nostrils. Anakin landed sure-footed on the gantry, glanced at the blade in his fist and almost seemed to shrug. And then, with a awful, casual indifference as cold as a Hoth icestorm, he slid his finger off the activation stud and the blade shrank away.

And then he reversed his grip on the 'saber and pommel-whipped her across the temple, driving her to her knees. He swept the blunt instrument back upwards with the full strength of his mechanical arm behind it, knocking her back to her feet and sending her staggering against the railing, her beautiful face mottled with bruises, blood gushing from a serious compression scalp-wound on her forehead, her lip split and eyes dull and soulless. Her 'saber fell from nerveless fingers and – its blade shrinking away - clattered on the latticed deckplates.

A crystallizing coldness took Anakin's heart – a freezing anger that numbed any sense of decency or honor or adherence to any code. This woman had threatened Padme, had taunted Obi-Wan, had probably killed hundreds of innocents. And she had humiliated him and made him feel like nothing more than a posturing youngling.

There wasn't any justice to be had for that in bringing her in – it was time to take her down.

He drew back his arm and struck her again, and again, and again. He stuck with a calculating precision better suited to a droid than a man, carefully ensuring he didn't knock her unconscious or kill her, always timing his blows perfectly so she remained slumped against the railings like a puppet with its strings cut, held there by the force of his assault and the weight of his icy rage. He only stopped when the weapon began to slip in his hand as her blood lubricated it.

And then he lashed out with a left handed punch that could have come from a Gamorean, striking the swaying woman directly on the chin with a hideous crunch. It tipped her over the railing, sending her tumbling down the cooling sink.

Anakin took a single step towards the edge of the gantry, wanting to watch her fall. He was entirely unprepared for the swelling surge of dark energy which seemed to draw power from every corner of the universe, including from inside his own black desires, that flipped Usaki in the air, latching her fingers into the holes of the decking beneath his feet. And then she was swinging under the gantry like a Haruun Kal marmoset, flipping over the railing on the other side in a flicker of impossibly shapely limbs. She landed behind him, swaying and stumbling into his back, her breath hot on his neck and a crimson smear of blood and lipstick kissing against his ear.

"You liked that, didn't you?" she croaked phlegmatically in what would have been a sensual purr had it not been for the damage his blows had inflicted on her throat. Her trembling right hand crawled like a Shebian ecstasy pspyder on his shoulder. "You didn't want to kill me, you didn't want to capture me, you just wanted to see a woman _bleed_." He span around, desperately knocking her off him, slamming her in the stomach with his elbow. But she was already leaping backwards, gesturing at her lightsaber which flew into her hand. "Think on _that_ , Hero With No Fear," she snarled scornfully from amid the bruised travesty that was her battered and beautiful face. She blew him a kiss that he swore he could feel between his thighs and his ears and then vanished into the steam in a burst of Ataru.

o

o

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

You are standing on the very edge of a precipice, your hands gripping onto the one thing that you think can stop you from falling. The 'saber-chopped durasteel is rattling in your hands, gamma-welds coming loose as the terrified trembling that you absolutely, positively cannot stop pinwheels out from your heart and across your shoulders and down your biceps even into your mechanical hand.

You have come _so close_ that you can feel the furnace heat on your hands and face. You very nearly completely lost control.

You cling to the railing as a physical representation of the things that hold you in place, seeing them as docking clamps holding you tightly in the transport cradle. And you rebel against even that, wanting to be flying free and clear in open space with no flight plan and no restrictions – not realizing that what holds you in place are not docking clamps but maneuvering thrusters. Your orbit is decaying, being pushed out into the cold darkness of interstellar space or pulled into the crushing gravity well of a dead star.

You don't realize the real danger you faced was not that you nearly killed her, but that you didn't think that was enough. You look at what you have done and you thank the Force she escaped, because you think nearly only counts with proton grenades.

The trembling in your hands is stopping as soothing rationalizations flow into your wounded heart – she is a Dark Jedi, she is a wellspring of dark emotion. She _wanted_ you to do that. She _forced_ you to do that. She _made_ you hit her like that.

You can sense the beacon of coruscating light that is your Master approaching, an event-horizon of calm, soothing warmth that flows from some place you cannot name; from the Temple, from the Force, from his own incomparable heart. And you know that to throw yourself into that light will cure you and will wash away all these rationalizations, and denials, and desperate justifications.

But you also know it will set you back, that you will have to admit he is still your Master. And you cannot bring yourself to do that. You cannot bring yourself to open up and let the healing happen. Because it will cost you, because that will mean you have to admit the Hero With No Fear fears _himself_.

Not for the first time, but perhaps for the last, you turn your back on the light your Master offers.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker right now.

o

o

Obi-Wan Kenobi vaulted over the railing a few meters behind Anakin, his 'saber lit and flaring in the stream-wash of the cooling sink. He landed on the gantry, taking in the tactical situation in a single sweep of his gaze that took an instant or less. His blade shrank away as he stepped towards Anakin.

The younger man gave him his back, so motionless he seemed to be shivering. Seen with the eyes of the Force, Anakin was a roiling column of cloud, feeding on internal energies, beginning the dangerous rotation that heralds a thunderstorm. Obi-Wan walked cautiously up behind him, grimly fascinated by the steady drip of blood from the hilt of the younger Jedi's blade.

"Anakin," said Obi-Wan. It sounded less like a question than a simple statement of being; _you are Anakin_. Slowly, as if he glided on an invisible repulsor plate, Anakin turned to face Obi-Wan. The younger man's eyes were shuttered torpedo tubes, seen from inside the armory. Obi-Wan was almost afraid to speak, as if words would be warheads launched into the interstellar emptiness of Anakin's soul, shattering his world forever. And so he simply stood silent as Anakin shook the blood from the hilt of his blade as if shaking himself awake and blinked once or twice.

"Usaki," he began. "She has escaped." It was not quite a lie. And then he looked directly at Obi-Wan. "Padme," he said urgently. "Where is she?"

"A statement I should be making if either of us has to," said Obi-Wan icily, "and a question I should be asking _you_." Anakin glared at Obi-Wan, infuriated at another lecture, but Obi-Wan did not give him chance to say a word. "The orders of the Council are not merely guidelines, Anakin!" he said in his clipped, precise Coruscanti accent. "Nor are mine."

Anakin's lips twisted sourly and he said, "I'm not your Padawan anymore." There was a surly tone to his voice, overlaying the almost imperceptible strata of regret and longing for what might have been a simpler time. If he were a Padawan, he could be rebuked simply and directly by his Master. Now that he was a Knight the interaction was far more complex – he was expected to discipline himself long before anyone else tried.

Obi-Wan's blue eyes narrowed very slightly, but that was the extent of his emotional reaction. "No," he said. His words were soft but primitively decisive. "You are not – you are something far more beholden to obedience. You are a _Jedi Knight_ , Anakin! If you do not obey orders, what are you?"

It was painfully clear to Anakin's ego – as bruised as Usaki's face – that Obi-Wan had not said _cannot_. The charge of willful disobedience was not much short of a slap in the face, and his words came like blaster bolts in a clipped, coiled, cold and oiled voice. "I am a Jedi who does what he _thinks_ is _right_ ," he snarled.

"Jedi do not disobey the orders of the Council, Anakin." Obi-Wan's voice was measured and calm, as if Anakin were still a nine-year old boy being lectured in the very basics of using the Force. As if reading his former Padawan's mind, Obi-Wan emphasized a key difference. "A Force-user who does not obey the Council is simply that – a Force-user. A Jedi does not do what he _thinks_ is right, he does what he _knows_ is right. And what he knows is that the _Council_ is right – without that knowledge he should no longer be a Jedi."

Anakin hung his head, ashamed by Obi-Wan's rebuke. He did not notice the hatch that Obi-Wan was holding open for him – quite unconsciously, perhaps. The Jedi that was Obi-Wan Kenobi did not intend and could not have imagined he was suggesting the Lost Twenty might become the Lost Twenty-One. All Anakin heard was the man who had loved and trained and protected and nurtured him for thirteen years; he heard his voice and in that voice he heard disappointment.

It was a disappointment with _himself_ , but Anakin did not hear that.

And so Anakin did not raise his voice or his ire – he breathed deeply and remembered the first lessons Obi-Wan had taught him. The _cha'a'un_ – the breath of patience. The kata of contemplation, of awareness, of discipline. Of connection to the Living Force. He sighed and lowered his head in the respectful bow of the student before the Master.

"I apologize, Master," he said contritely. He looked down at his boots and back on the events of the past few hours. "I have not been a credit to your training today, and for that I am sorry. I am very grateful for all you have done for me." Obi-Wan smiled and put a calloused hand on Anakin's broad shoulder. He squeezed the muscles bunched as hard as wroshyr wood, attempting to massage out some of the tensions.

"Anakin," he said gently – and then paused. There was so much to say, and yet no foundation for him to say it on. He hung his own head – he had failed Qui-Gon, failed his own Master's dying wish to _train the boy_. He had not made Anakin into the Jedi he deserved to be.

It was a measure of Obi-Wan's own weaknesses that he saw the fact Anakin was not a model Jedi as a personal failure. He swallowed heavily. "Anakin," he began again, "I am never disappointed in you – only in myself. You have surpassed my feeble attempts at instruction – any failures in you are my own." He paused, taking the hand off the young man's shoulder as he lifted his head and rubbing his beard. "Anakin," he said carefully, as lightly as he could, "you are close to Senator Amidala." The young man's eyes flashed worried fire. "Friends, I mean – of course," he added swiftly.

And it was not a lie; Obi-Wan did think she and Anakin were friends – even though he knew Anakin might have wanted it to be more, at least subconsciously. Again, he blamed himself for not beginning Anakin's training before they had met, when it would have been early enough. "I care for her a great deal," replied Anakin, "and I would never let anything happen to her. I have been assigned as her yojimbo, and I realize I have neglected that duty, but . . ." Obi-Wan cut him off.

"That is not what I mean, Anakin," he said. He gave a little half-grin. "I've moved beyond chiding you for your mistakes, Padawan," he smirked. His face became serious again. "I mean that you care for her, and that such care may be . . . dangerous." Anakin's brow furrowed. "It is an attachment, and attachments are dangerous for Jedi. They are, as all things are, transitory." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "There may be a time when you cannot feel what you feel for her now, when such feelings will be dangerous – and perhaps even a path to the Dark Side."

Anakin looked at his former Master with outward calm – nothing more than a polite, puzzled curiosity – but inside he was churning like a hunting Vaapad. _How much does he know? How much does he guess?_ "Master," he said with lips that were suddenly as dry as the sands of his home planet, "how can compassion be my undoing?" As soon as he said it, he regretted it – he had been so focused on his own concerns he had forgotten to even _pretend_ to think like a Jedi.

"Compassion is one of the easiest ways that a Jedi can be undone, Anakin," smiled Obi-Wan, incredulity washing over his well-manicured face. "It is perhaps the most seductive path to the Dark Side – because _love_ seems to be such a high goal." He shook his head, dismissing the young man's error. "Senator Amidala is a young woman," he began, his eyes cast down, his voice uncertain. "A . . . beautiful young woman, who has . . . many friends outside of your circle. There may come a time when it may be . . . advantageous for her to . . . marry."

Anakin could almost not believe his ears – his Master was speaking of such things, which itself was first-beam Holonet news, but he also sounded _embarrassed_ to be talking about it; which was – of course – impossible. And it was only the ludicrous irony of him suggesting she might get married _to someone else_ that stopped Anakin from boiling over into rage. "Padme would never marry merely for political gain, Master – and it is unworthy of you to even suggest it!" he snapped. Obi-Wan shook his head, and then bowed it contritely.

"I did not mean to imply that, I apologize. But, the point remains . . ." He looked at his friend, passing his hand over his brow. There was so much he needed to say – starting with the fact Padme was _pregnant_ – but could not, simply because it would be a breach of whatever trust could possibly exist when even _she_ didn't know yet. "Anakin, there will come a time when she loves someone else." He finally managed to stare Anakin straight in the face. "I want you to be aware of that, and ready to let that attachment pass out of your life when the time comes. Do you understand me?"

o

o

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

You stand facing your former Master, and a difficulty you never envisaged having to face. You expected and planed to hide your marriage and your love, but never to explain why you did not fear losing that love.

And in the whirl of that confusion and difficulty, you utter a simple lie. A lie you think is safe because you think you will never have to live up to it. And you follow that lie with words which are true, but which are still deceptive.

You tell Obi-Wan Kenobi – and yourself – that you are more than ready to let that attachment pass from your life. That there was a time when you feared losing her, but that time is past.

You don't know if Obi-Wan believes you – but you begin to believe yourself.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker right now.

o

o

Padme did not simply stand around on the rusted island of wreckage, clinging to the oxidized ferrous garbage in a stagnant lake. She saw no reason to do so – the Jedi Council answered to the Senate, not the other way around. Of course, that did not mean individual Jedi answered to individual Senators – although she might have liked to have thought it did. She unclipped the ascension gun from her belt and pointed it upwards, aiming it at the lowest of the gantries that cut across the great cooling sink. It was blurred, fuzzed in her vision by shifting steam. With a pulse of electromagnetic energy, the barbed dart shot upwards, durasteel cable spooling off with a howl, and vanished into the cloudbank. Abruptly, the cable stopped paying out – the sensors mounted in the gun must have detected that the dart had embedded in the gantry. Padme tugged firmly on the gun and – when the cable did not move – she hit the activation plate and retracted the cable, pulling herself smoothly upwards through the clouds.

The steam condensed on her as she rose, soaking her hair and already damp clothes. She coughed and spat as water trickled into her mouth, blinking her eyes. When she opened them, she found that she was at the level of the gantry.

And then she realized that the dart had not embedded in the gantry at all.

She had missed – or perhaps a subtle use of the Force had _made it miss_ – by about half a meter. The dart had screamed past the gantry, rising about three meters before it had been stopped. But it had not been stopped by hitting something – it had been stopped because the durasteel cable had been caught about three meters below the speeding dart. Caught by a rancor-leather gloved hand that gripped as tightly as a docking claw.

And now Padme Amidala was hanging like a vermiform Talosian on a creen line, her hands clinging to the hilt of a grapnel gun which hung half a meter below the clenched fist of Usaki Ketsubo Daikatana – a fist that was held at the full stretch of her long arm. Three meters of cable dangled loosely down, tangling once or twice around her arm, from the other side of her fist.

Padme drifted her gaze up the taut cable, along the well-muscled arm glistening in its embrace of hot, wet leather, and looked at Usaki's face. She gasped in horror – when she had last seen Usaki, she had been perfect and beautiful, as flawless as the Sorceress of the Desert in the Mon Calamari opera. Now, her face was mottled and corrupted with bruises and blood, her skin battered and split, green eyes bloodshot with shattered capillaries.

"Your _protector_ did this to me," she snarled though split lips, "the Hero With No Fear. I was defenseless and defeated, I wasn't a threat." Padme frantically swung her legs, reaching for the edge of the gantry with her feet. Usaki shook her head indulgently and activated her 'saber with her free hand, cutting a wide semi-circle out of the latticework of the deckplates. The half-moon, its edges still glowing white-hot, fell lazily and hissing through the steam. "I hope you appreciate the fact I took the trouble to cut off your foothold," she purred. "It would have been much easier to simply cut off your _feet_." Padme tried for a few more seconds to reach the gantry, and then – when she realized it was impossible – stopped and simply hung in place. "Your brave Jedi did this to me, the one who loves you. See what he does to women whom he doesn't agree with, who don't give him _just_ what he wants."

Padme shook her head. "He's not like that, he wouldn't . . ." Usaki looked down at her with disbelieving pity. "You must have made him . . ." she said desperately.

"And I'm sure he says the same when he hurts _you_ ," she laughed in an insinuating purr. She deactivated her 'saber and clipped it to the inside of her skirt, pressing her left hand to her chest in a horrible pantomime. "'Oh Padme!'" she gasped melodramatically, "'why do you have to make me _hurt_ you? I only hurt you because I _love_ you!'" She snarled and glared at Padme. "They're all the same – and he's no better than me." Hanging from the cable, her arms beginning to tire, Padme frantically shook her head, the motion making her spin back and forth.

"No, no," she gabbled, "he's better than you. You're a _monster_ , you're a Dark Jedi, you're a murderer . . ."

"And what is _he_?" she asked in a low purr, pulling her face close to hers, so close that Padme could smell her exotic perfume and alluring sweat and the copper taste of her spilled blood. "Are you so sure he's none of those things? Look what he did to a defenseless woman – can you _really_ say that he's never done anything like this before?"

o

o

This is Padme Amidala.

She hangs by a thread, quite literally, over a yawning chasm she has fallen down once today, guided and supported in her tumble by the man she trusts, away from the man she loves. And she has climbed again, seeking to rise to him and finding instead this _monster_ – what she wants to call a dark reflection of him, a warning, an example of everything he could become if _he_ falls.

And now she stares into those venom-green eyes and sees dreadful knowledge and understanding. She sees this monster is not really a reflection of her husband, but is perhaps his future. She sees the marks of his handiwork on her face and she cannot bring herself to deny it. Because she asks her to deny he has ever done anything like this before – and she cannot say that.

They were animals, he said. They killed his mother, he said. He slaughtered them in revenge.

He has done this before, he has done _this_ now and who is to say he won't do so again?

But this is Padme Amidala, and he is the man she loves.

o

o

Padme jerked on the cable, her shoulders screaming at her as Usaki swung her arm back out to full stretch. She bit her lip and gripped the hilt of the gun tighter with trembling hands, glancing at the dark clad figure which had just dropped out of the steam to land on the gantry with a ringing note like a plucked Twi'lek lute. The figure drew itself to its impressive height, a strong arm and a bar of azure flame extending from it. "Let her go, Usaki," snarled Anakin Skywalker.

Usaki unfolded her fingers just a shade – a meter of cable raced through her fist before she tightened it again, the sharp edges of the durasteel rope wrapped around her arm slicing the brown leather. "Let her go?" she taunted. "An unfortunate choice of words." Anakin cocked his blade at his shoulder in a Shien-ready stance, mirroring her own position, and made to advance. She shook her head. "I wouldn't, little Skywalker – she's getting awfully heavy." Her arm trembled, just enough to make Anakin stop in his tracks. "You'd best tell her to lay off the pyollian cake." Anakin's face darkened with horrible rage.

"You little sleemo," snarled Anakin, "if you hurt her . . ." Another two decimeters of cable slipped though Usaki's fist.

"You're protector isn't too bright, is he?" she smiled at Padme. "I guess _boys_ who hurt women don't need to be clever." She turned to face him. "Every insult is just you jamming another slice of cake down her throat."

Anakin swallowed. "Put her down," he said tightly. "This is between you and me." Usaki laughed, a beautiful, trilling sound that crawled like a Hoth cryopede down his spine.

"Oh, how naive and arrogant you are, little boy," she taunted. "This has nothing to do with _you_ – you're not man enough to even interest me. You're a distraction – and not a very good one at that." She jiggled the cable in her fist, causing Padme to jerk back and forth, her hands sliding on the grip of the gun. "Senator Amidala is going to have a private meeting with Count Dooku – perhaps a friendly chat can help end this _senseless_ war."

Anakin's jaw clenched, muscle rippling there and causing his teeth to creak like starship framing members in a hyperspace-storm. His eyes measured decimeters and angles; he thought he could be on her before she stood a chance of drawing her blade. He could run her though or strike her down in an _instant_. He could kill her before she knew what had happened – and then he could save Padme, grabbing her with the Force and lifting her up to the gantry before Usaki's beautiful corpse had even begun to tumble.

Couldn't he?

But if he didn't – if he wasn't fast enough, or he didn't even _try_ , instead choosing to attempt to capture or merely injure her – then she would simply hurl Padme down and away, a tumbling doll thrown against the wall with bone-shattering power, accelerated by gravity and the Force.

He could kill her. He _should_ kill her.

He should have killed her when he had the chance – but he had wanted to make her suffer.

He had _wanted_.

And Obi-Wan wanted her alive. The Council wanted her alive – for questioning. Once again, Obi-Wan and the Council were getting in his way, holding him back. This time, they were risking Padme's life as well, using her for their own purposes.

Impotent rage and anger and hatred and disgust boiled within him, dark like a Coruscanti thunderhead. And Usaki saw it, and tasted it, and smiled. He was so close, teetering on the very edge of the precipice. The fractures in their relationship were as clear as the wounds on her face, distrust and uncertainty hanging heavy in the thick, wet air.

His eyes snapped open. He'd decided to hell with the Council – he was going to kill her.

Or at least try.

She was aware of this before he was, and before he was even in motion she had jumped onto the railing, perched like a bat-hawk, ready to drop into the steam-shrouded depths of the cooling sink with her prisoner.

Anakin realized he'd failed – she was too far away and any blow against her would send her body tumbling off the railing, leaving Padme to fall. He hesitated for a telling moment, not knowing what to do, total defeat whispering at his skin, and the lie he had said before echoing in his mind.

 _I am more than ready to let that attachment pass from my life, Master._

From out of nowhere, a lightsaber came spinning.

A hurled weapon turned into a whirling disk of light the color of a summer sky. It slashed through Usaki's right arm a centimeter above the last loose coil of cable that was wrapped around it, burning though leather and armorweave and flesh and bone. She howled in rage and agony as her arm was severed just below the elbow, and Anakin howled in grief and despair as she lost her balance and fell from the railing, tumbling into the clouds of the cooling sink.

Padme fell too, the severed forearm – its fist still clamped shut around the cable – dropping down. Anakin reached for her with the Force, but Usaki – with the last remnants of her spiteful strength – was working against him, interfering with his own Force powers.

His wife vanished into the steam clouds, the loose cable trailing behind her, Usaki's amputated limb tangled above her.

And then the cable snapped taut, fastened to the durasteel railing by a sturdy Corellian hitch both Usaki and Anakin had been too-intent on each other to notice the dangling end of the cable tying itself into. Obi-Wan landed on the gantry with an easy flex of his knees, holding out his hand as his 'saber flew back to his belt and clipped itself in place. The cable began to draw itself up, coiling neatly on the gantry as it did so, until Padme could fling one arm around the railing and try to haul herself onto the latticework deckplates.

"Help her, Anakin," Obi-Wan said quietly as the younger man stared with a mixture of awe and shame at the Jedi Master. With a start, Anakin hastened to obey while Obi-Wan stroked his beard with his fingers, supporting the elbow of that arm with his other hand, and shook his head softly.

o

o

This is the Rule of Two.

There are always _two_ – a Master, and an Apprentice. One to embody power, and one to crave it. One to learn, and one to teach. One to desire, and one to be desired.

One to be the action, one to be the result. One to be the subject, one to be the object.

However it is expressed, the Rule of Two is sacrosanct. It is always that way.

And Obi-Wan Kenobi looked down at the two in front of him – one helping the other, one being helped – and felt the two inside her. And he stood alone, and stared into the steamy darkness into which Usaki had vanished.

This is how it feels to be Obi-Wan Kenobi.

For now.

 **A/n :** Thanks for being along for the ride! If you have enjoyed, please review / comment and keep on the look out for more stories featuring Usaki Ketsubo Daikatana.


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